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Visualizing Reproduction: a Cultural History of Early-Modern and Modern Medical Illustrations

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Abstract

Written as a response to a conference exhibition of medical illustrations of reproduction, this article considers the gains of an interdisciplinary study of medical illustration to both historians and medics. The article insists that we should not only be attuned to the cultural work that such representations perform but also that such illustrations are the product of material medical practices and the often humane impulses that drive them.

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Notes

  1. The New Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998).

  2. C. Geertz, ‘Religion as a cultural system,’ in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (1973), p. 89.

  3. Geertz, ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,’ in Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 3–30.

  4. See M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction (1976; Allen Lane, 1979).

  5. See M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966; London, 1970) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969; London, 1972).

  6. R. McGrath, Seeing her Sex: Medical Archives and the Female Body (2002), p.1.

  7. Ibid., p. 3.

  8. A virtual gallery remains open for viewing. See http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  9. M. Fissell, Vernacular bodies: the politics of reproduction in early modern England (Oxford University Press, 2004), p.246.

  10. I thank Christine Preddy at the RCM for this data (personal communication, 23 June 2008).

  11. This can be further broken down: women represented 26.54% of fellows (those who have maintained membership of the College for over 12 years and shown a contribution to the field of obstetrics and gynaecology), and 57.76% of members (junior members). 68.46% of those registered for College exams are female. We can observe a shift towards a greater proportion of women in the College, therefore. I thank Lucy Reid at the RCOG for this data (personal communication, 23 June 2008).

  12. L. Cody, Birthing the nation: sex, science, and the conception of eighteenth-century Britons (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 167. See ‘Gravid uterus, fetus, during delivery,’ J. van Rymsdyk in W. Smellie, A Sett of Anatomical Tables (1754), in ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  13. Ibid., pp. 168, 167.

  14. Ibid., p. 169.

  15. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  16. Cody, Birthing the nation, p. 278. See ‘External genitalia,’ J. van Rymsdyk in W. Smellie, A Sett of Anatomical Tables (1754), Plate 15:‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  17. Ibid., pp. 278–81.

  18. J.L. Want and P.C. Want, ‘William Hunter’s “The Anatomy of the Gravid uterus,” 1774–1974,’ The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the British Commonwealth, 81, 1 (January 1974), p.10; Robert Ollerenshaw, ‘Dr Hunter’s ‘Gravid Uterus’—a bicentenary note,’ Medical and Biological Illustration (1974), 24, p. 57.

  19. J. L. Thornton and P.C. Want, ‘William Hunter (1718–1783) and his contributions to obstetrics,’ British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. 90, September 1983, p. 793. See also J.L. Thornton and P.C. Want, ‘Artist versus engraver in William Hunter’s ‘Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus,’ 1774,’ Medical and Biological Illustration, 24 (1974), pp. 137–139.

  20. Ollerenshaw, “Dr Hunter’s ‘Gravid Uterus,’” p. 49.

  21. L. Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 62. For J. van Rymsdyk in W. Smellie, A Sett of Anatomical Tables, 15th Plate (1754), see ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery’, http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/. For histories of midwifery and man-midwifery, see J. Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men: A History of Inter-Professional Rivalries and Women’s Rights (London, 1977), H. Marland, The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe (Routledge, 1994), and A.Wilson, The Making of ManMidwifery (Harvard, 1995).

  22. Jordanova, Sexual visions, p. 61.

  23. K. Harvey, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 20–21.

  24. W. Smellie, A Sett of Anatomical Tables, with Explanations, and an Abridgement, of the Practice of Midwifery, with a view to illustrate a Treatise on the Subject (London, 1754). BL: C.161.d.4.

  25. See Harvey, Reading Sex, pp. 12–33; esp. p. 20.

  26. Ibid., p. 46.

  27. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/ and Harvey, Reading Sex, p. 181.

  28. Jordanova, Sexual Visions, p.50.

  29. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  30. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  31. Harvey, Reading Sex, pp.124–145.

  32. Ibid., pp. 113–5.

  33. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  34. See both at ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  35. Jordanova, Sexual Visions, pp. 48, 143.

  36. M. Kemp (ed.), Dr William Hunter at the Royal Academy of Arts (University of Glasgow Press, 1975).

  37. W. Hunter, The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus Exhibited in Figures (Printed at Birmingham by John Baskerville, 1774), fi.

  38. Rymsdyck did most of the drawings for the Hunter volume (12 of 13 of the subjects), though these were engraved by a series of engravers. See Ollerenshaw, “Dr Hunter’s ‘Gravid Uterus,’” pp. 52, 55.

  39. Hunter, The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus, description to Plate VI.

  40. B. Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, 1994), p. xxiv.

  41. Stafford, Artful Science, p.xxi.

  42. Smellie, Sett of Anatomical Tables, p. fi.

  43. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  44. Smellie, Sett of Anatomical Tables, p. fi.

  45. Thornton and Want, ‘William Hunter,’ p. 788.

  46. W. Hunter, An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus, and its contents (London, printed for J. Johnson and G. Nicol, 1794). Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group: http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO, document number CW3306724621.

  47. Fetal skeletons with placentas, Cornelis Huyberts in Frederik Ruysch, Opera omnia (1737). See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  48. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  49. Here we can see a disjuncture between text and image: Hunter in fact wrote, ‘an egg is not more like the form of the human uterus, than a cylinder like the beautifully varied figure of the trunk of the human body,’ before explaining how the gravid uterus is often irregular in shape. Hunter, An anatomical description, p. 6.

  50. E. Keller, ‘The Subject of Touch: Medical Authority in Early Modern Midwifery,’ in E.D. Harvey, Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2003), p.69.

  51. Ibid., p. 70

  52. Ibid., p. 75.

  53. Smellie, Sett of Anatomical Tables, description accompanying 16th plate.

  54. The form of authority claimed by women writers was examined by Lisa Cody in her paper to the ‘Imagining Reproduction’ conference.

  55. On the motives of eighteenth-century man-midwives, and their respect for life, see J.M. Lloyd, ‘The “Languid Child” and the Eighteenth-Century Man-Midwife,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2001, 75, pp. 641–679.

  56. See ‘Imagining Reproduction Gallery,’ http://www.usask.ca/english/jmh/.

  57. Jeff Nisker’s paper to the ‘Imagining Reproduction’ conference called for this.

  58. http://imaging.dundee.ac.uk/main/forensic-art/20060712144507/.

  59. http://imaging.dundee.ac.uk/main/forensic-art/20071126122827/.

  60. See http://www.maa.org.uk/. The international organization is the Association of Medical Illustrators. See www.ami.org.

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  1. Department of History, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Karen Harvey

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Correspondence to Karen Harvey.

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Conventional acknowledgements to conference organizers are hardly sufficient in this instance. This essay is based on a paper written for the conference, ‘Imagining Reproduction in Science and History,’ but was substantially transformed by the discussions there. I thank Ray Stephanson and Roger Pierson for the invitation and to them and all those present for an exciting and informative few days.

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Harvey, K. Visualizing Reproduction: a Cultural History of Early-Modern and Modern Medical Illustrations. J Med Humanit 31, 37–51 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-009-9100-x

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