Anatomists and entrepreneurs in early eighteenth-century London

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 59, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 219-239

  Guerrini, Anita ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Anatomical lecturing; Anatomy; Animal use in science; Frank Nicholls; James Douglas; William Cheselden

Indexed keywords

ANATOMY; ARTICLE; ATTITUDE TO HEALTH; COMMERCIAL PHENOMENA; CURRICULUM; EDUCATION; HEALTH EDUCATION; HISTORY; HUMAN; METHODOLOGY; MOTIVATION; SKELETON; UNITED KINGDOM;

ANATOMY; ATTITUDE TO HEALTH; CURRICULUM; ENTREPRENEURSHIP; HEALTH EDUCATION; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HUMANS; LONDON; MOTIVATION; SKELETON;

EID: 85047691568     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrh067     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. Alice N. Walters, "Conversation Pieces: Science and Politeness in EighteenthCentury England," Hist. Sci., 1997, 35, 121-154, p. 123.
2. See also Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994);
3. Steven Shapin, '"A Scholar and a Gentleman': The Problematic Identity of the Scientific Practitioner in Early Modem England," Hist. Sci, 1991, 29, 279-327;
4. Mario Biagioli, "Scientific Revolution, Social Bricolage, and Etiquette," in The Scientific Revolution in National Context, Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 11-54 (who discusses the symbolic value of anatomy but says little about its practice);
5. Geoffrey Sutton, Science for a Polite Society (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995).
6. On the definition of politeness see Lawrence Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
7. and especially Lawrence Klein, "Coffeehouse Civility, 1660-1714: An Aspect of Post-Courtly Culture in England," Hunt. Lib. Q, 1998, 59, 31-51.
8. Shapin, Social History of Truth, pp. 119-125.
9. Hilary Mantel, The Giant, O'Brien (London: Fourth Estate, 1998), pp. 63-64.
10. When Martin Lister and a friend visited the preparation room of the Paris anatomist Duverney in 1698, the friend became faint. Martin Lister, A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698, R. P. Stearns, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), p. 65.
11. Heinrich von Staden, "Anatomy as Rhetoric: Galen on Dissection and Persuasion," J. Hist. Med., 1995, 50, 47-66, p. 53.
12. Giovanna Ferrari, "Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna," Past and Present, 1987, 117, 50-106.
13. Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 61-62.
14. Anita Guerrini, " 'A Scotsman on the Make': The Career of Alexander Stuart," in The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Reinterpretation, Paul Wood, ed. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2000), pp. 157-176.
15. On scientific lecturing in early eighteenth-century London, see Stewart, Rise of Public Science; the special issue of the British Journal for the History of Science, 28:1 (1995) on this topic;
16. Simon Schaffer, "Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth Century," Hist. Sci., 1983, 21, 1-43;
17. Simon Schaffer, "The Consuming Flame: Electrical Showmen and Tory Mystics in the World of Goods," in Consumption and the World of Goods, John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 489-526.
18. Here comparisons could be drawn to entrepreneurs in other sciences, for example, Pamela Smith, The Business of Alchemy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).
19. Roy Porter, "Medical Lecturing in Georgian London," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1995, 28, 91-99.
20. See also Susan C. Lawrence, "Anatomy and Address: Creating Medical Gentlemen in Eighteenth-Century London," in The History of Medical Education in Britain, Vivian Nutton and Roy Porter, eds. (Atlanta and Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995; Clio Medica, 30), pp. 199-228.
21. On street displays see Richard Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978);
22. Robert Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);
23. Stephen Pender, "In the Bodyshop: Human Exhibition in Early Modern England," in "Defects": Engendering the Modern Body, Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum, eds. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), pp. 95-126;
24. for later in the century, see most recently Marius Kwint, "The Legitimization of the Circus in Late Georgian England," Past and Present, 2002, 174, 72-115.
25. Jan Golinski, "A Noble Spectacle: Phosphorus and the Public Cultures of Science in the Early Royal Society," Isis, 1989, 80, 11-39.
26. Shapin, Social History of Truth.
27. On the blood transfusion experiments, see Jean-Jacques Peumery, Les Origines de la transfusion sanguine (Amsterdam: Israel, 1975).
28. On electrical lectures, see Schaffer, "Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle," and "The Consuming Flame."
29. George Peachey, A Memoir of William and John Hunter (Plymouth: Brendon, 1924), p. 8, lists many more lecturers.
30. James Douglas, Myographia Comparatae Specimen: Or, a Comparative Description of All the Muscles in a Man and in a Quadruped... (London: George Strahan, 1707), "An Account of what Dr. Douglas obliges himself to perform in a Course of Human and Comparative ANATOMY," pp. 209-216. Neither Peachey nor I have found a newspaper advertisement.
31. Daily Courant, no. 1102 (4 January 1706);
32. Daily Courant, no. 1108 (11 January 1706);
33. Daily Courant, no. 1180 [sic] (25 January 1706).
34. On the "Blew Boar," see G. T. Crook, ed., The Complete Newgate Calendar (London: Navarre Society, 1926), 2,268 and passim. Hangings occasionally took place at the intersection of Fetter Lane and Fleet Street; the murderess Sarah Malcolm was hung there in 1733: ibid., 3, 72. My thanks to Rictor Norton for these references.
35. Peachey, Memoir of William of John Hunter, pp. 12-14;
36. James Douglas, "Mr Rolfes methode in dissecting ye Brain," Hunter MS D314.34, Glasgow University Library, Glasgow, Scotland.
37. Barber-Surgeons' Company, Court Minute Books, MS 5257, vol. 7, p. 106, microfilm at Guildhall Library, London;
38. Peachey, Memoir of William and John Hunter, pp. 3-4, 17, 38-39;
39. Zachary Cope, William Cheselden 1688-1752 (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1953).
40. John Douglas, A Syllabus Of What Is to Be Perform'd in a Course of Anatomy, Chirurgical Operations, and Bandages (London: Tho. Woodward, 1719), preface.
41. James Douglas, Myographia, p. ix.
42. William Cheselden, Syllabus sive Index Humani corporis partium Anatomicus, In xxxv Praelectiones distinctus. In Usum Theatri Anatomici (London: for the Author, 1711);
43. William Cheselden, Syllabus. . . Editio secunda, in William Cheselden, The Anatomy of the Humane Body (London: N. Cliff and D.Jackson, and W. Innys, 1713), pp. 191-269.
44. Cheselden, Anatomy of the Humane Body, n.p.
45. Daily Courant, no. 2568 (16 January 1710);
46. Daily Courant, no. 2584 (3 February 1710);
47. Daily Courant, no. 2772 (II September 1710).
48. Cope, Cheselden, pp. 12-13;
49. Daily Courant, no. 5990 (2 January 1721), "Tinctura Mirifica" next to an advertisement for Nathaniel St. André's "Course of Human and Comparative Anatomy."
50. Information from a survey of London newspapers of the 173OS in the Burney collection at the British Library, including the Daily Courant, the Post Boy, and the London Evening Post. Peter Shaw and Francis Hauksbee, An Essay for Introducing a Portable Laboratory (London: J. Osborn and T. Longman, 1731).
51. See also Peachey, William and John Hunter, p. 45,
52. but his list is not complete, nor is Lawrence's in "Anatomy and Address," table 1, p. 210.
53. William Hunter advised his students to attend his course at least twice - the first time simply to observe, the second to take notes: William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures on Anatomy (London: J. Johnson, 1784), pp. 103-104.
54. Locations of Nicholls's lectures are in his advertisements in the London Evening Post. An invaluable resource for plotting locations is Ralph Hyde, ed., An A to Z of Georgian London (Lympne Castle, Kent: Harry Margary, 1981).
55. Lawrence, "Anatomy and Address," pp. 209-211, discusses the location of anatomy lecturing later in the century, seeing the move west as a sign of the greater respectability of anatomy.
56. Cheselden, Anatomy of the Humane Body, "Advertisement."
57. Ibid., title page.
58. William Cheselden, Osteographia, or, The Anatomy of the Bones (London, 1733). Others who wrote treatises on osteology included Monro and Duverney.
59. Alexander Monro, A Treatise on The Anatomical Encheiresis or Manual Part of Anatomy [1747], MS M 169, Health Sciences Library, University of Otago, 38ff., 41.
60. Peachey, William and John Hunter, p. 21.
61. On the construction of a skeleton, see for example Pierre Dionis, L'anatomie de l'homme . . . demontrée au Jardin Royal (Paris: Laurent d'Houry, 1690), p. 4. Dionis preceded Duverney as anatomy demonstrator at the Jardin du Roi.
62. Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, "Un amphithéatre d'anatomie moralisée," in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century, Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 1975), pp. 217-276.
63. See also Jan C. C. Rupp, "Matters of Life and Death: The Social and Cultural Conditions of the Rise of Anatomical Theatres, with Special Reference to Seventeenth Century Holland," Hist. Sci., 1990, 28, 263-287;
64. Catalogues of all the Chiefest Rarities in the Publick Anatomie Hall in the University of Leyden, H. J. Witkam, ed. (Leiden: Witkam, 1980).
65. "La Mort n'en saura rien," catalog of an exhibition at the Musée National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, 14 October 1999-24 January 2000 (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999).
66. Antonie M. Luyendijk-Elshout, "Death Enlightened: A Study of Frederik Ruysch," J. Am. Med. Assoc., 1970, 212, 121-126;
67. Julie V. Hansen, "Resurrecting Death: Anatomical Art in the Cabinet of Dr. Frederik Ruysch," Art Bull., 1996, 78, 663-679.
68. Douglas left a number of notes on injection techniques among his manuscripts, for example (from 1704), Hunter MS D517-517A, Glasgow University Library.
69. F. J. Cole, "The History of Anatomical Injections," in Studies in the History and Method of Science, Charles Singer, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), II, 285-343.
70. Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures, p. 112.
71. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, "Éloge de Monsieur Du Verney," in Oeuvres completes, VII, 189-198, p. 190;
72. Luyendijk-Elshout, "Death Enlightened," p. 126.
73. James Douglas, Myographia, p. viii.
74. Cheselden, Anatomy, p. 109.
75. Robert James, A Medicinal Dictionary, 3 vols. (London: T. Osborne and J. Roberts, 1743-45), III, s.v. transfusio.
76. Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso, Marjorie Hope Nicolson and David Stuart Rodes, eds. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), introduction, p. xiii.
77. Cheselden, Syllabus, Praefatio, English translation in Syllabus, Editio secunda, p. 191;
78. Frank Nicholls, Compendium Anatomicum Ea omnia complectens quae ad Cognitam Humani Corporis Oeconomiam Spectant... (London: John Clark, 1733), p. 63.
79. "Osteologia," Hunter MS D311, f. 48-50, Glasgow University Library.
80. On the rise of pet keeping, see Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 110-120.
81. James Douglas, Myographia, pp. vi-vii.
82. Cheselden, Anatomy, preface.
83. [James Douglas], "Drawings of the Pudendum Muliebre with an Account of a Hermaphrodite," MS Hunter DF 60, Glasgow University Library;
84. see Anita Guerrini, "The Hermaphrodite of Charing Cross," forthcoming.
85. Stephen Pumfrey, "Who Did the Work? Experimental Philosophers and Public Demonstrators in Augustan England," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1995, 28, 131-156, p. 140 n. 39.
86. Daily Courant, no. 6057, 21 March 1721.
87. The Post Boy, no. 4907, 3-5 January 1721;
88. they also advertised in the Daily Courant, no. 5994, 6 January 1721.
89. Altick, Shows of London, pp. 54-55;
90. see also Michel Lemire, Artistes et mortels (Paris: Chabaud, 1990), pp. 72-77;
91. Sylvie Hugues, "Esthétique et Anatomie: Science, Religion, Sensation," Dix-huitième siècle, 1999, 31, 141-158.
92. For public displays in this period, see "A Collection of 77 Advertisements Related to Dwarfs, Giants, and Other Monsters and Curiosities Exhibited for Public Inspection," British Library, London, England (the pamphlets and broadsides date from about 1680-1730), shelfmark NTAB 2026/25.
93. Peachey, William and John Hunter, pp. 27-28.
94. London Evening Post, 27 December 1733;
95. see also Peachey, William and John Hunter, pp. 29-30.
96. An Explanation of the Figure of Anatomy, Wherein the Circulation of the Blood Is Made... (London, 1737), p. 2.
97. Nicholls's advertisements appeared regularly in the London Evening Post in the 17305.
98. Nicholls, Compendium Anatomicum, Praefatio (translation mine).
99. Peachey, William and John Hunter, pp. 3-5.
100. Peter Linebaugh, "The Tyburn Riot against the Surgeons," in Albion's Fatal Tree, Douglas Hay et al., eds. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 77.
101. Peachey, William and John Hunter, p. 17;
102. Cope, Cheselden, pp. 9-10.
103. Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute (1988; rpt. London: Penguin, 1989), p. 55.
104. See also Thomas Laqueur, "Bodies, Death, and Pauper Funerals," Representations, 1983, 1, 109-131, 122-125.