In her 2006 monograph Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection[1] Katharine Park follows the studies of women’s bodies in the Renaissance and asserts that social understandings of gender played a central role in the history of medicine. Focusing on the anatomization of female bodies, particularly of the 1300–1550 Florentine aristocracy, her book explores the “linked themes of generation, holiness, and female corporeality in connection with the early history of human dissection.”[2] The dissection of the corpses of holy women confirmed their holy status, while the dissection of patrician mothers revealed “women’s secrets” and reproductive mysteries. In a series of case studies culled from anecdotes from Florentine archives, analysis of anatomical treatises, and a vast assortment of images, she successfully demonstrates that mysteries surrounding women’s bodies spurred the development of anatomical studies in pre-modern Europe.
Initially, Park investigates how the dissections of various holy women demonstrated why women were ideal subjects for determining “secrets” within a body. In 1308, Chiara of Montefalco, an ascetic and visionary was dissected post mortem by other nuns looking for proof of her holy status. Not only did they find cross-shaped tissue within her heart, they also found three gallstones which ‘represented’ the holy trinity. Margherita of Citta di Castello, another ascetic and visionary who died in 1320, was also dissected by fellow nuns who found within her heart stones impressed with holy images.[3] In both cases, the evidence found within their bodies was present at each respective canonization trial. Yet although holy women were dissected, it was generally recognized that these women were different from the broader female population. Their internal organs confirmed their outwardly saintly behaviors, which could not be observed by outsiders. Though this differs greatly from the type of knowledge sought by dissecting lay women, it set the standard for autopsying women to answer anatomical riddles.
In her second chapter, Park argues that in early Italian Renaissance, anatomical knowledge was represented in a public male form rather than a secretive female form and thus in this period the female body emerged as the model subject for dissection due to secret and hidden interior. She begins by establishing that in medieval Italy, there was a set of knowledge ranging from abortion,[4] livestock health,[5] and particularly reproductive health and care of infants,[6] which was practiced by women as went generally unknown to men. This idea of feminine secrets was perpetuated by the location of female reproductive anatomy: within the body. This contrasted male reproductive anatomy which was on the outside and therefore “easier” to understand. Therefore, after death the woman’s reproductive organs were the chief subject of study. This in turn established the purpose of dissection in general as a quest by the dissector to reveal secrets concealed within the body.
A key aspect of understanding women’s anatomical secrets was in the field of reproductive health. In this period, due to the high mortality rate of children, it was essential that women bear as many children as possible for dynastic purposes. In order to better understand generation, many patrician wives and their uteruses specifically were dissected after death in childbirth. As a result, male physicians entered the field of reproductive health and began to treat women for infertility and miscarriage. Finally, Park analyses the title page of Andreas Vesalius’ 1543 text De Humani Corporis Fabrica, drawing attention to the fact that although famous for its “musclemen” his subject is in the famous frontispiece is a woman. This is strange, she claims for work which is weakest in its understanding of female anatomy,[7] but fitting nicely in her thesis that learned men believed that the way to better anatomy was to understand the internal workings and “secrets of women.”
For many reasons, Park’s work is comparable to Mario Biagioli’s 1993 book Galileo Courtier.[8] Initially they seem to discuss vastly different topics; anatomical dissection versus the court life of Galileo within the Medici Court. However, they are very similar in many respects. Firstly, they both examine a specific cultural institution within the Early Modern/Renaissance Florentine aristocracy. Park, through examinations of dissection, determined that cultural understandings of the female body fueled anatomical and medical practices even through Vesalius. She also implies that social practices of female dissection impacted the way Vesalius himself practiced and published his research. In contrast, Biagioli examines how the cultural practice of patronage at the Florentine Medici Court impacted the way that Galileo practiced science. Examining these texts together allows for an extremely rich picture of how unique cultural and social institutions impacted the “great men of science” in Renaissance and Early Modern Florence.
In Secrets of Women Katharine Park examines the anatomical practices in the dissection of holy women, and mothers and wives in a quest for anatomical secrets but also clues for reproduction. Though she fails to provide historiographical instances of historians dismissing gender in studies of Renaissance anatomy, she is not writing a historiographical text but a rich and unexplored cultural history. Her argument is not only an excellent introduction to the history of anatomy, but it also places to role of women in medical history as not merely observers but as active participants as subjects of study. This book is essential for readers interested in the cultural and social history of Renaissance Italy, gender history, or the history of medicine, especially when paired with similar social examinations of the Florentine aristocracy, such as Galileo, Courtier .
[1] Park, Katharine. Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection. New York: Zone Books, 2006.
[3] Ibid p. 67
[4] Ibid p. 84
[5] Ibid p.78
[6] Ibid p. 102
[7] Ibid p.
[8] Biagioli, Mario. Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Print
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