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as a place where anatomy but also plays were Michael Sappol, Dream anatomy: a unique performed. The relations between anatomy and blend of art and medical science from the literature mentioned by Zinguer in her intro- National Library of Medicine, Washington, duction now seem a bit one-sided: writers bor- United States Department of Health and Human rowing from anatomy and not vice versa. And Sciences, 2006, pp. xii, 180, illus., $30.00 then: what did writers and poets borrow from the (paperback 978-0-16-072473-2). science of anatomy? Michel de Montaigne’s somewhat idiosyncratic use of the term More than the treasures of Tutankhamen’s ‘‘skeletos’’ (not so much a skeleton in the ana- tomb, more even than the latest impressionist tomical sense, as a skinned but living body blockbuster, the most visited show on earth is dreamt up by the writer to allow insight into the the display of plastinated cadavers prepared by workings of the human being) as described by the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens. Marie-Luce Demonet seems to suggest that What attracts fee-paying visitors in their mil- writers were mainly interested in anatomy as a lions to stare at these spectacularly revealed source for metaphors and emblems. human innards is the subject of Michael In some essays the subject ‘‘anatomy’’ seems Sappol’s marvellously compelling book, namely to be stretched beyond its limits. The descrip- a renewed recognition of the fact that we all tions of physical ailments as a strategy to stress think of ourselves as ‘‘anatomical beings’’. the seriousness of certain emotions in sixteenth- I confess I picked up this book without great century ego documents may be a sign of an enthusiasm. Having myself been responsible for emerging sense of physicality, of the body, in the a number of medical exhibitions that have literature of that period (Nadine Tsur-Kuperty, showcased anatomical images, I was doubtful if ‘Les mots du corps’) but how closely does the yet another treatment of anatomy’s aesthetic use of these literary descriptions relate to the surface could add much to what Martin Kemp, science of anatomy? Other essays use anatomy Deanna Petherbridge and Andrea Carlino, as an analogy: Gustave Flaubert came from a amongst many others, have already shown us. family of famous doctors, Madame Bovary is a Like these earlier studies, Dream anatomy takes book influenced by its author’s medical con- us through a parade of the science’s greatest hits. nections, as is the clinical character of his But there is nonetheless something distinctive observations, but does that make Flaubert an and important about this visual essay, and it lies anatomiste, as He´le´na Shillony would have it? in Sappol’s unblinking focus on the emotional The wide spectrum of disciplines and topics potency—the undiluted joy—of ‘‘the anatomi- brought together in this collection sometimes cal imagination’’. tends to obscure its central theme of the relation His thesis is unambiguous: having initially between anatomy and literature. That said, prompted the mutual enrichment of art and Théatre^ de l'anatomie et corps en spectacle science, anatomical illustrations later became offers an interesting panorama on the way the the terrain upon which they were ‘‘defined in anatomical method of looking at its subject opposition to each other’’. In Sappol’s golden, pervaded and influenced (French) literary cul- pre-modern age, anatomical images provided ture from the sixteenth century onwards. How- humanity with a moral mirror and probe—a ever, it would have been nice if the ways in playful and dramatic canvas upon which cada- which culture—literary and otherwise— vers teased viewers by delicately draping their pervaded and influenced the science and own skin, cavorting with props, making dra- scientists of anatomy had also found a place in matic poses and dancing as only the dead know this book. how. Then, from the end of the seventeenth century, the pleasure of early anatomy came to Tim Huisman, be seen as a problem: ‘‘play and the pursuit of Museum Boerhaave, National Museum for the truth became incompatible’’. In order to turn it History of Science and Medicine, Leiden into a serious science of the real, the dreamy

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‘‘art’’ of anatomy had to be squeezed into the speculates. Even the question of who bought margins—images of dissected bodies were quite these atlases and prints and why, or indeed who literally stretched to fill the entire visual surface supported their production, is barely remarked of a plate or figure, leaving no room for plots, upon. But none of this matters, for it is not his gestures, props and fun. By 1800, the fantastical subject. Instead Sappol has treated us to a pas- aspects of anatomy had been downgraded as sionate account of some of the most astonishing merely ‘‘frivolous’’, banished to the extraneous incarnations of anatomical inspiration, and for realms of academic, moral and historical art, that we should be very grateful. popular health and science education, political cartoons, films, fiction and, most recently, Ken Arnold, contemporary art. The Wellcome Trust Inevitably the details of his story are more complicated. For one thing, anatomical images were mostly the result of collaborations between Richard Sugg, Murder after death: literature two artists: one brandishing a pencil, the other a and anatomy in early modern England, Ithaca scalpel. Plotting the balance of power and fame and London, Cornell University Press, 2007, pp. between them reveals fascinating insights into xiv, 259, illus., £23.45, $45.00 (hardback 978-0- instances of stylistic evolution. Printing innova- 8014-4509-5). tions also influenced the direction of change. But it was another form of technology (the camera Murder after death is a study of anatomical obscura) that suggested photographic accuracy as knowledge, practice, and reference in early the most compelling visual ideal; with the modern England, as explored in the plays, resulting ‘‘relentless gaze’’ being perfectly poems, sermons, and stories of the period. embodied in the collaborative work of Jan van It contributes to a growing field of scholarship Riemsdyk and William Hunter, whose images interested in understanding the history of the almost terrorize their subjects. These new con- body not only through the study of scientific ventions of realism also encouraged artists to discovery and medical progress, but also disentangle primary anatomical details from through the close reading of the contemporary secondary elements of symbolism and morally and often popular literature that seized upon suggestive contexts. Bernhard Albinus’ anato- such advances for its source material. mical atlases of the 1740s, for example, with their The book begins with a consideration of the lavish backgrounds of wild life were reprinted impact continental anatomical works like thirty years later without accompanying rhino- Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica ceroses and the like. Each passing style, each step had on the English literary imagination. In in the process of ‘‘getting real’’, is clearly particular, Sugg emphasizes how the metho- mournedbySappol.Effortstogiveviewers dology and investigative impulses of anatomy unmediated access to exactly what artist– presented new rhetorical opportunities for anatomists saw, inevitably, he suggests, led to writers. In an appendix to the book, he provides pictures that were decreasingly pleasing to look at. a bibliography of 120 English ‘‘anatomies’’ Produced some three years after the exhibi- published between 1576 and 1650, and this tion of the same name, Dream anatomy is itself a empirical evidence provides strong support for philosophical reflection upon a set of images his ensuing argument about the relationship, now packed away in the drawers and shelves of a both etymological and epistemological, between library. It works more through repeated visual anatomy and analysis. In the practice of both, he assertions than any substantially marshalled argues, investigators split and sort their subjects body of evidence, and offers very little by way of into sections for scrutiny, incrementally assert- explanation about what propelled these unfor- ing mastery over the entire corpse / corpus. Both tunate changes: some combination of theology, are involved in a quest for knowledge, its limits, epistemology, and economics he briefly and its control, and Sugg frequently returns to

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