The Anatomy Lecture Then and Now: A Foucauldian Analysis

Abstract

Although there are many points of continuity, there are also a number of changes in the pedagogical form of the anatomy lecture over the longue durée, over centuries of epistemic change, rather than over years or decades. The article begins with an analysis of the physical and technical arrangements of the early modern anatomy lecture, showing how these present a general underlying similarity compared to those in place today. It then goes on to consider examples of elements of speech and presentation, description and illustration that are used in the biology lecture from the early modern (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) and late modern (or contemporary) eras. The anatomy lecture thus demonstrates a basic physical and technical continuity in the classroom or theater, whereas the larger epistemic functions in which it is embedded have changed: from a descriptive, discursive function, focusing on individual organs and their physicality, to one that is more integrative, systemic and also performative in both form and content.

Keywords:

• pedagogy
• episteme
• Foucault
• technology
• lecture
• anatomy

Notes

1. To be fair to Vesalius, it is important to note that he did much to dispel some beliefs about human anatomy that were a part of the medieval ‘order of resemblance.’ For example, he used an actual human body in his anatomical lectures and research; and he rejected certain observations made by the ancient anatomist Galen, who, as Vesalius had discovered, had used only apes in his dissections.

2. Harvey lists 12 ‘general rules’ or Canones Anatomae Generales many of which (not quoted here) support the authority of empirical knowledge gained from the dissection, balanced with a qualified affirmation of ancient and more recent authorities in anatomy. A number of these rules also affirm the importance of efficient use of time in dissecting the cadaver, since preservation and refrigeration technologies were then unknown.

3. Harvey’s book on the circulation system in humans and animals, published 13 years after the Lumleian lectures, has far fewer of these references to previous and ancient anatomical authorities (Harvey, 1889).

4. Subsequent translations have tended to replace Harvey’s words ‘use’ [Lat. usus] and ‘utility’ [Lat. utilitas] by ‘function.’ However, the functional perspective was only emerging at the time and not yet recognized as such. That is, the translations superimpose a modern perspective on the text that did not yet exist at the time of Harvey, whose work contributed to the emergence of the functional perspective in the way Foucault (1970) describes it.

5. It is worth noting that this conception of the heart as a pump has been challenged since Harvey’s time, particularly by philosopher, educationist, and esotericist Rudolf Steiner (among others). Steiner proposed that that this organ is ‘not a pump forcing inert blood to move with pressure but that the blood was propelled with its own biological momentum, as can be seen in the embryo’ (Marinelli, Fuerst, van der Zee, McGinn, & Marinelli, 1995, n.p.). This same source illustrates that some researchers have subsequently sought to substantiate Steiner’s hypothesis.

6. Descartes (1664), though almost completely defending the scholastic view, presents arteries as an extension of the heart (e.g., Gilson, 1920).