*Anatomy lab in American medical school*
The power within. No, I am not referring to those “live laugh love”-esque messages you see on your high school English teacher’s wall or an abstract appreciation for an individual’s personality. I am talking about the power that stems from knowledge, specifically the knowledge that is hidden deep within each of us. Below our various layers of cells and tissues. And this concept of knowing what lies within a body can then relay power and authority to the person who has said knowing. This may come as a surprise to you but stick with me here. For example, how much respect, power, and authority is given to physicians? A lot! That’s why the profession is considered so prestigious. The incredible amount of prestige is also why so many people try to enter the medical field as physicians, like the students we heard earlier. There is an inherent power imbalance created when knowing the interior of the body because it is not something easily visualized. It requires expensive and elaborate technology or the ability to dissect another human being. This is why we hear these medical students, hoping to enter this prestigious field, discussing interior anatomy while examining cadavers. How did this emphasis on anatomy and interior structures become so important and why does it remain so important even to this day? These questions are what I hope to answer today, and our journey revolves around the medical practice of dissection.
*Medieval music*
That short musical sequence you heard was. An instrument common in Medieval European music. You heard what students studying medicine would have also heard. These students would be among the first recorded to observe and then conduct the practice of dissection. Fasciculus Medicinae, a collection of medical treatises and illustrations from the late 15th century, contains the first recorded image of dissection. This image, however, is very different from what we would now consider a dissection. The instructor lectures from behind a podium, someone else cuts the body, and the students look away in disgust. Yet, even this disappointing show of dissection became the standard for Europe at the time and spread throughout the continent due to collections like Fasciculus Medicinae. This phenomenon created the backbone for the diffusion of dissection as Europeans began their process of colonialization and adapted their medical knowledge to facilitate the oppression of indigenous peoples.
*Arabic dissection audio*
The French entered the Ottoman Empire in the late 1700s to the middle 1800s and with them came French physician, Antione Barthelemy Clot. Clot was charged with modernizing the healthcare system in Ottoman Empire, specifically Egypt where he was located, and he attempted to incorporate the French medical knowledge he had learned, specifically dissection, into Egyptian practice. However, he faced consistent backlash from the native population. To the native Egyptians, the thought of cutting someone open to examine their insides was blasphemous and heavily looked down upon by both military and religious leaders. Nevertheless, this was an opportunity to further dominate the native population and Clot did not shy from ensuring that Egyptians followed his colonial teachings. Though they were disgusted by the idea of it, Egyptian medical students were forced to understand Clot’s style of medicine so that he and other French leaders would have more power in the country. This same event occurred in India by the British.
*Indian dissection audio*
After the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857, India came fully under control of the British Empire. As such, many British soldiers were stationed in the country and the surrounding area and these soldiers needed medical attention, along with the indigenous soldiers that were placed into the army. In response, the British decided that the native population must also be taught medicine. Indians, like the Egyptians however, were vehemently against the dissection of human cadavers, especially if the dissector was of a high caste. The first Indian to dissect, Madhusudan Gupta, however, was a high caste Hindu and was heralded as a hero and pioneer of indigenous physicians by British officials. His promotion became a way for the British to change the perception towards dissection, even though Gupta himself did not consider his work with dissection all that important. Raising the question of how important is dissection?
*Introspective music*
How important can dissection be towards learning about the body? As we have discovered, the concept itself was developed relatively recently in a European context and yet it is applied globally. Not only are there inherent differences between everyone, but there is inherent subjectivity in conducting and examining dissections.
*Cadaver looks nothing like idealized picture*
Keeping all that in mind, along with the historical context we have just learned, how can dissection serve as a standard practice? Is it just a product of colonial medicine or is there still merit to it? How can it be combined with traditional medicine? What does dissection accomplish besides making people squeamish?
References
Ragab, Ahmed. “Two Students and a Corpse: the Semantics of Disgust in the Making of Colonial Knowledge.” History and Technology, vol. 34, no. 1, 2018, pp. 79–88., doi:10.1080/07341512.2018.1516865.
Bhattacharya, Jayanta. “The First Dissection Controversy: Introduction to Anatomical Education in Bengal and British India.” Current Science, vol. 101, no. 9, 2011, pp. 1227–1232. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24079618. Accessed 13 Mar. 2021.
de Ketham, Joannes. “[Lesson in Dissection] – Digital Collections – National Library of Medicine.” U.S. National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health. Accessed April 10, 2021.
McCall, Taylor. “Facendo Il Libro.” The Fasciculus Medicinae: An Introduction to the Images and Texts | Facendo Il Libro. The New York Academy of Medicine. Accessed April 10, 2021. https://digitalcollections.nyam.org/digital/fasciculusmedicinae.