Relocating Anatomy at the 3rd Level: Anatomical Knowledge, Body and Commodification of Body Parts (original) (raw)

Introductory Remarks In the opening sentences of his celebrated book Sawday raises a few questions – where did these cognate terms like anatomy, dissection etc. originate, and how did the modern, ostensibly neutral scientific sense of " dissection or " anatomization " come to be the predominant meaning of the word? Seemingly, in an attempt to answer these questions, he makes it clear that the anatomist, then, " is the person who has reduced one in order to understand the morphology, and thus to preserve morphology at a later date, in other bodies, elsewhere. " 1 Etymologically speaking, we have a plethora of meanings of the word " anatomy ". It has undergone changes in meaning and connotations with the passage of time. A·nat·o·my (nat' me),n., pl. –mies. 1a. a philosophical activity and practice which sought to reveal the wonder and goodness of God's creation through dissection of the human body (c. 1250-1800). 1b. later reduced to a means of approaching and mastering the world through structure and function rather than purpose (c. 1650-1850). 2. the process by which a subject is rendered object. 3. the study of an object by its parts. 4. a contested site of knowledge for post-structuralism, feminism, cultural studies, queer studies, disability studies, and other postmodern disciplines eager to critique the modernist search for an underlying order to reality. 5. Informal. oversimplification that both benefits and harms the object of study: She allowed patriarchy's anatomy of the female body to determine her sense of identity. 6. public anatomies, name given to open demonstrations or lectures by anatomists, usually including vivisection of animals as well as dissection of the human body. [1350-1400; ME < L anatomia < Gk anatom(e) a cutting up (ana-ANA-+ tom-cut (var. of tem-) + –e n. suffix) + –ia –Y 3 ] 2 The present study of mine is from a medical professional's point of view, not from a historian's viewpoint. This particular position of doing research has yielded, to my opinion, a few interesting issues that can be taken up for further investigations by historians of science and medicine. There was descriptive anatomical knowledge in traditional medicine enshrouded by philosophical and religious orthodoxies and interventions which made it " holy " and " eternal ". The Western medical knowledge has however provided the knowledge of dissection and delving into the interiors of the body. The body was subjected to experimental verification. Rasmussen identifies one source in the concession of established Christian orthodoxy to permit dissection of the human body some five centuries ago. 3 Such a concession was in keeping with the Christian view of the body as a weak and imperfect vessel for the transfer of the soul from this world to the next. For in the eyes of the Church these had more to do with religion and the soul, and hence properly remained in its domain. This compact may be considered largely responsible for the anatomical and structural base upon which scientific Western medicine eventually was to be built. Moreover, at the same time, the basic principle of the science of the day, as enunciated by Galileo, Newton, and Descartes, was analytical, meaning that entities to be investigated be resolved into isolable causal chains or units, from which it was assumed that the whole could be understood, both materially and conceptually, by reconstituting the parts. With mind-body dualism firmly established under the imprimatur of the Church, classical science readily fostered