The Anatomist Anatomis'd

Within the history of medicine, the study of anatomy has arguably received more attention than any other medical discipline, yet, as this study argues, there is still much about it that remains misunderstood or uncritically accepted. Reaching the peak of its prestige and influence in the eighteenth century, the results of anatomical research almost uniquely in the history of medicine survived into the modern period. Unlike the vast majority of classical, medieval and early modern...
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Within the history of medicine, the study of anatomy has arguably received more attention than any other medical discipline, yet, as this study argues, there is still much about it that remains misunderstood or uncritically accepted. Reaching the peak of its prestige and influence in the eighteenth century, the results of anatomical research almost uniquely in the history of medicine survived into the modern period. Unlike the vast majority of classical, medieval and early modern concepts of medicine which have been thoroughly rejected by modern science, the basic principals of anatomy - observations about the position and interconnection of bone, muscle and blood-vessels - have not changed substantially since the days of Galen and Vesalius. But does this alone explain why this story of progress and continuity manages to survive the challenges that rendered all other early medicine redundant?By providing an overview of the discipline during the long-eighteenth century, and focussing closely on how contemporary practitioners defined anatomy and thought it should be practised, this book provides a more systematic investigation into the subject. In so doing it argues that upon closer inspection for anatomy too there is a break around 1800, and that there is an ancien regime anatomy, just as there was an ancient regime political structure.