Prohibition of anatomy dissections during the Middle Ages: Myth or reality? (original) (raw)

[Towards an Islamic ethics of the body: from Middle Ages through transplantation surgery]

Medicina nei secoli, 2008

The study of some of the open questions arisen in the relation of transplantation surgery with contemporary Islam ethics shows the presence of some specific problems which derive from the different attitude Islam shows towards bioethic matters: namely, the tendency - entrenched in cultural tradition since the Middle Ages - to privilege law and ethics and juridical-religious prescriptions over technical-scientific assumptions. A short survey illustrates some of the different positions involved in the debate and hints at some possibilities to find a positive issue for such questions.

Ancient biology, recent technology. Immagine tecnica e cultura protesica

L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di misurare l’impatto che l’immagine tecnica ha avuto e continua ad avere rispetto alla relazione sensoriale, cognitiva e più estesamente estetica dell’individuo con l’ambiente mediale con cui si trova di volta in volta a confrontarsi. Facendo riferimento ai lavori più classici e a quelli più recenti di ambito cognitivo e neurocognitivo, il paper mira a porre in evidenza la rilevanza di questo genere di indagini nell’ambito degli studi sulla fotografia e sul film che si offre come banco di prova privilegiato per verificare le potenzialità dialettiche dei due approcci e per valutare le relazioni che Joseph Anderson (1996) intravedeva nel confronto tra la nostra “ancient biology” e gli sviluppi della “recent technology”.

«I had once the Chance to see when I was performing my Office of Midwifry». Paesaggi anatomici nel Midwives Book di Jane Sharp (1671)

LEA - Lingue e letterature d’Oriente e d’Occidente, 2017

In a cultural context dominated by men, Jane Sharp was the first English woman to have authored a midwifery treatise. The present essay highlights the originality of her Midwives Book (1671) in comparison with the previous male treatises, showing how she consciously exploited her male counterparts' works, often taking position against them. In pursuing this purpose, the article analyzes the functions attributed to the use of a metaphorical language, identifying some specific rhetorical strategies: in particular way, Sharp's insistence on her own visual experience as a certification of truth, and her use of metaphors taken from the natural world. Thus, the Midwives Book seems to take the shape of an " experiential journey " in the woman's body which, in Sharp's words, is no more the territory of mere speculation, but a real landscape, seen, contemplated, explored and described.