Dr. Paula R. Curtis

Giardino's talk deals with the history of medicine. While Eurocentric histories have maintained that Mondino de' Luzzi (c. 1270-1326) was the first physician to combine systematic practices of human dissection with anatomical study at University of Bologna.

BUT despite the Anothomia Corporis Humani (1316) being considered the authority until the 16th century, medieval Asian history is revealing early human dissections going back to China since at least the late 11th cen, & medieval Islamic attitudes towards it were not so negative.

He works with a 14th cen Persian manuscript, The Precious Books of the Ilkhans on the Branches of Chinese Sciences, to show anatomical practice and knowledge went back much further and filtered from China into Islamic science and onward.

Mondino de' Luizzi was a professor of medicine in Bologna from 1307. He was considered one of the first to introduce demonstrative dissection in his lessons-- but there are issues with this; not enough cadavers, his master might have preceded him.

1316 is the first "modern" anatomy textbook- shows systematic descriptions of parts of the body. Has Latin and Arabic terms on organs, their locations/surroundings. #histmed

The manuscript versions were not illustrated, Giardino says, probably because of the way dissection was conducted. But print editions do have images.

https://twitter.com/cerydel/status/1094306206288629761 …

Wide dissemination of Anathomia secured Bologna's position as a center of this knowledge. There's an interesting tension going on here between text-oriented books and image-oriented books. Different methods of teaching/learning not in agreement, and relying on canon.

The Anathomia was not illustrated in the early versions because the text was used alongside practice, but we have an image tradition from China and Persia.

We're looking now at anatomical images from Huatuo Neizhao Tu (1294) showing organs. They're lovely! (sorry this presentation is image-restricted, twitter!)

Comparing with Persian texts, we see the exchange going on between two sides of the Mongol empire.

We also know of exchanges of medical knowledge from Persia westward, as with images of the squatting human body from 1386 and similar images in Western MSS, but individual organ images are less common.

Though we don't know precisely how many of these images and the knowledge underlying them are conceptually linked, we cannot exclude that the these European medical practitioners owe more to these eastern sources of knowledge than has been recognized.

Now Peggy McCracken (Romance Languages and Literatures, Women’s Studies, and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan) takes us into the discussion period.

McCracken: How do we think about interdependence without flattening difference? How do we think about the phenomenology of dissection? Can we think about animal dissection in relation to human dissection too? Animals are often taken as a proxy or model for human bodies.

She asks how we can contextualize the knowledge that dissection offer. What questions does knowledge about the body answer, and do they change as we travel to different locations? Even the most concrete claims about bodily function and formation must be inflected by world views.

She raises the idea of seeing vs. doing- it's one thing to look at the body, or look at the book, & then actually cut into a body. There's a translation of that into images that goes on that we must think on. Do images of body parts translate an experience of cutting into parts?

Giardino notes that because of issues in acquiring bodies, there are only so many chances for people to see what the inside of a body looked like. The divide between seeing and doing also exists in that students are only having the opportunity to watch.

The Islamic legal documents don't say much about when people dissected on pigs or dissected on humans, though there were instances of both. People might allude to practices, but they were quite vague.

Kit French notes that the plague also causes a shift in medical practice and knowledge.

Giardino acknowledges that the Iranian image shows direct influence from China, and in Anothomia, the mode of depiction (an organ, extracted from context) suggests the influence from these earlier sources.

Audience member brings up the function of captions- is the text attempting to classify the organs? How are the images linking the visual with the textual? Is there contextual vocabulary?

There's a process at hand here, too, of inherited vs. applied traditions of engaging the text. Can we expect a 1 to 1 ratio in the transmission of knowledge?

Images demonstrating the movement of chi, for example, would not have necessarily been understood or valued by Persians reproducing the text. The Persian manuscript is then acting as a filter.

There's also differences in the images based on the modes of cutting-- an organ might be depicted differently based on physical practices of dissection.

Alexis Miller asks about the ethics of dissection in China and in Persia, burial practices. Handling of bodies? Giardino says that for the Persia side, opening the body in the heat is definitely an issue, but there's a lot we don't know.

Hansen notes "The Washing Away of Wrongs" to look at that has information on the handling of the dead body/forensic medicine.  https://www.amazon.com/Washing-Away-Wrongs-Thirteenth-Century-Technology/dp/0892648007 …

@James_A_Benn bringing us back to religion! The images are probably circulating through the Mongol world as part of the Daoist canon. The isolation of organs shows interest in dissection, but it's part of an interest in showing the interior of the body as religious practice.

We therefore can't think of it as purely bio-medicine, but reflects graphic choices of people operating in the Daoist canon; diagrams that may not necessarily guide medical practitioners but religious figures managing the interior of their own bodies.

#histmed twitter, hope this of interest! @nursingclio