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Dossier thématique : Anatomical Models

Between Profession and Performance: Displays of Anatomical Models in London, 1831-32

Anna Maerker
p. 47-59

Résumés

En 1831, le docteur et fabricant de modèles français Auzoux travaille à Londres pour commercialiser ses modèles anatomiques qu’il présente comme des substituts de cadavres, alors trop rares pour les études médicales en Grande-Bretagne. Le médecin occupe une résidence à Leicester Square, où se trouvent l’école et le musée anatomique des célèbres frères Hunter ; il y montre ses modèles démontables aux médecins et aux sociétés médicales. Cette étude de cas met en lumière le rôle central du spectacle pour la commercialisation et la promotion des modèles Auzoux auprès du public professionnel. Elle montre qu’une approche historienne doit se garder d’associer spectacle et charlatanerie et gagne à prendre en compte les pratiques théâtrales dans la profession médicale.

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  • 1 For the history of anatomical models see e.g. LEMIRE Michel, Artistes et Mortels, Paris, Chabaud, 1 (...)
  • 2 For demonstrations of anatomical models for visitors to the Florentine museum La Specola around 180 (...)

1For centuries, anatomical models in Europe have been displayed in many different contexts, and for a variety of audiences. In the early modern period they were on show in anatomy theatres during public dissections in the carnival season; in the eighteenth century they accompanied midwives and teachers of obstetrics; in the late nineteenth century models of embryos were an integral part of research activity and publications.1 Scholarship on the history of artificial anatomies has highlighted a number of recurring themes, including in particular the tension between education and entertainment in the display and use of models. Such accounts frequently identify entertainment with performance. This is not surprising, perhaps, as live performance was central to the commercial strategies of quacks and charlatans who used spectacular displays to raise interest in their wares and services. However, this conflation of performance and entertainment may obscure the presence of elements of live performance in other, more sober medical contexts. Live performance could, for instance, be part of educational displays in museums.2

2The present paper investigates how performative practices figured in professional contexts of model display as opposed to popular entertainment. This case study analyses the public demonstrations of model-maker Dr Auzoux in London in the early 1830s to highlight how displays for professional medical audiences drew on elements of live performance. The paper will also investigate audience responses to interrogate whether early-nineteenth-century medical professionals shared the preconceptions of modern historical scholarship in considering performance antithetical to medical professionalism.

Dr. Auzoux and the serial production of detachable anatomical models

  • 3 For the use of “obstetric phantoms” in the eighteenth century see for instance GELBART Nina Rattner (...)
  • 4 For Fontana’s wood anatomy see e.g. CONTARDI Simone, La Casa di Salomone a Firenze. L’Imperiale e R (...)

3Since the eighteenth century, medical practitioners explored the possibilities of different materials to produce three-dimensional models for teaching purposes. Midwives and obstetricians developed robust “obstetric machines” or “phantoms” in leather, wood, and textiles which did not look much like human bodies, but which enabled hands-on training of obstetric gestures.3 Especially in Italy and France, modellers had perfected the art of anatomical modelling in wax. These anatomical waxes achieved a high degree of naturalism in their depictions of the body and its interior, but they were rather fragile and did not allow for frequent handling. The “Holy Grail” of anatomical modelling remained elusive: the development of models which looked realistic while being robust and available for “dissection” into pieces. The Italian Felice Fontana, director of the Florentine Museo La Specola and its world-renowned production of wax models, attempted to produce “dissectible” models in wood, but the material proved impractical: it took a long time to produce a single model, and the wood warped under changing temperature and humidity which made dismantling impossible.4

  • 5 AMELINE Jean-François, Observations sur les pièces d’anatomie de M. le Dr Auzoux, Caen, impr. de Bo (...)
  • 6 DICKINSON George, English Papier-Mâché: Its Origin, Development and Decline, London, Courier Press, (...)
  • 7 On the life and work of Auzoux see e.g. DAVIS Audrey B., “Louis Thomas Jerome Auzoux and the papier (...)
  • 8 AUZOUX L., Leçons élémentaires d’anatomie et de physiologie humaine et comparée, second revised edi (...)

4In their quest for detachable models, other modellers began to experiment with different materials: in Caen, the medical teacher Jean-François Ameline, for instance, turned to papier-maché.5 The material was then widely used to make toys, architectural ornamentations and furniture.6 Ameline mounted papier-maché onto real skeletons to achieve life-like, robust models. However, as he had mounted the material onto real skeletons his models were unique and not dissectible. In the 1820s another French doctor succeeded in his goal to develop models which were not only robust, but also detachable and suitable for serial production. Louis-Thomas-Jérôme Auzoux (1797-1878) from Normandy had started medical school in Paris in 1818.7 While he was not considered a particularly gifted student, he developed a fascination with anatomy and determined to develop a new kind of anatomical model. He may have seen Fontana’s failed attempt in wood, a copy of which was at the Paris Medical Faculty. Auzoux developed a new type of paper paste (which he called “terre”) as the basis for producing life-sized, detachable models of the human body. To highlight the novelty of this innovation, Auzoux coined a new name for his products: anatomie clastique, or clastic anatomy, from the Greek for “breaking, separating”.8 His life-sized homme clastique complet of 1858, for instance, consisted of 92 detachable pieces, extensively labeled to facilitate the identification of details, and the process of dismantling and reassembling the model.

5Larger model parts had the French names labeled directly onto them; smaller details could be identified by means of small numbered labels and a matching tableau synoptique. Over 2000 details were labeled on the 1858 homme clastique. In addition to this labeling for identification, Auzoux’s models used a second labeling system of numbers accompanied by the picture of a pointing hand, indicating the order of dissection: thus the students’ hands were guided in the process of dismemberment. Furthermore, Auzoux’s papier-mâché models compromised between naturalistic and schematic colorings, heightening natural contrasts to facilitate the models’ use as teaching aids for lay audiences and beginners. Thus different strands of adjoining muscles for instance were painted in brighter and darker shades of red to facilitate their distinction. Another physical feature of the “dissection” of Auzoux models which enhanced their similarity to the dissection of a corpse was the use of an instrument, a steel spatula which replaced the surgeon’s scalpel.

6The introduction of a new material had important implications for model production, distribution and use. No longer unique sculptures made by professional artists for wealthy patrons or institutions, now models could be molded and produced in series. Thus, they became affordable for a wider range of institutions and individuals. Their robust material allowed for hands-on interaction and global travel. With financial support from the government, Auzoux founded a factory in his small home town, Saint-Aubin d’Ecrosville in Normandy, where he employed on average around 80 men, women and children. In model production he adopted tools and techniques from local industries, such as bell-foundries and cider presses. Originally restricted to models of normal human anatomy, his product range came to include comparative anatomy, embryology, and botany.

The global marketing of the models

  • 9 Medical and Surgical Reporter 17 (1867), p. 496.
  • 10 ROBERTSON Theodore, The Whole French Language, New York, 1856, p. 450.

7The various marketing strategies of the tireless Auzoux made his models a world-wide success. As the artificial bodies travelled from France as far as Brazil, Russia, and India, they captured the imagination of writers, artists, and diverse audiences. In 1867 an American doctor observed that “[e]very one knows the name of Dr. Auzoux, the famous fabricant of anatomical models, whose mannikins traverse the Atlantic, and find their way into every medical school in the United States”.9 By the 1860s, Auzoux had become a household name. He was even included in a nineteenth-century French textbook for American students, which used the scenario of one of Auzoux’s public lectures as an occasion to practice polite conversation: “À quoi Alexis assista-t-il un jour? À une leçon du docteur Auzoux. […] Qu’est que le docteur démonta pièce à pièce? Un homme artificiel.”10

  • 11 For a more detailed analysis of Auzoux’s marketing strategies see MAERKER Anna, “Anatomizing the Tr (...)

8Auzoux actively engaged in creating a market for his products, using a wide range of approaches. These strategies frequently contained elements of live performance, and they required close attention to political and social concerns, to changing contexts of model use, and to potential customers’ cultural sensibilities, both at home and abroad.11

9In addition to his factory in Normandy, Auzoux opened a shop in Paris, near the Medical School. In Paris he regularly lectured to medical students and lay audiences, and in 1839 he published a textbook which recreated his lectures, and which followed the tenets of the new public health movement, advertising anatomy as a means of social improvement. Auzoux also made use of innovations in printing technology which made printing considerably cheaper: he printed “spam letters”, standardised letters describing his latest product developments which the entrepreneur sent to schools and universities around the country to advertise his new models.

  • 12 Medical and Surgical Reporter 17 (1867), p. 496.

10To demonstrate the models’ ability to teach anatomy to anyone, Auzoux also staged the public examination of his workers, who received anatomical instruction at the factory in Normandy. One eyewitness reported that “To prove the proficiency acquired by these peasant anatomists, Dr. Auzoux brought three of his workpeople, one man and two young women, to Dr. Fort’s anatomical class, and examined them before an amphitheatre crowded with students. The examination was long and minute, and conducted not only by Dr. Auzoux, but by Dr. Fort himself. The answers were invariably correct, and showed a minute and intelligent knowledge of anatomy, superior to that of many medical students presenting themselves for the doctorat. Dr. Auzoux, with just pride, pointed out the result as a striking proof of the utility of his preparations as a means of assistance in committing to memory the vast collection of anatomical details required in a medical education”.12

  • 13 For a general account of Clot’s activities in Egypt see CLOT Antoine, Mémoires de A.-B. Clot Bey, e (...)

11The most important example of Auzoux’s claim that his detachable models could teach anatomy to anyone was the young Bouché. As his assistant in the early years of lecturing Auzoux employed one of his former factory workers, the young Bouché. Bouché had received instruction in anatomy and physiology when he started working in Auzoux’s Norman factory as a child, and his talent for these subjects soon earned him a promotion to assist in Auzoux’s lectures in Paris. There, Bouché made the acquaintance of Dr Antoine Clot, a French doctor in charge of developing European-style medical education in Egypt under Pasha Mehmet Ali. Clot recruited the young man as a lecturer and demonstrator in anatomy for his medical school near Cairo, where Bouché taught anatomy to students and laypeople using both models and dead bodies.13

The role of the medical profession

  • 14 Académie royale des sciences, Rapport fait par le Commission nommée pour examiner une pièce d’anato (...)
  • 15 Académie de médecine, Rapport fait par le Commission nommée pour examiner les pièces d’anatomie art (...)
  • 16 Académie Royale de Médecine, Rapport de la Commission chargée d’examiner la pièce d’anatomie artifi (...)

12While many of Auzoux’s marketing methods since the 1830s targeted lay audiences, in the first years of development he focused on seeking the support of medical experts. In 1822 he submitted a prototype of a model to the Academy of Medicine. A commission of academicians wrote a favourable report which Auzoux subsequently published to publicize the Academy’s support. In their first report, the Academy stated that Auzoux’s model “layed bare all surfaces [of the body] as in a dissection”, and that it would “not fail to be useful to those who dedicate themselves to the study of medical sciences, and especially to those who practice medicine and surgery far away from large cities”.14 It was significant however that this early report by medical experts did not commit itself fully to saying that the models could replace dissection. The commission left open the question of the models’ purpose. By 1825, however, there were more explicit voices which limited the models’ claims to utility. A similar report by the Academy of Science recommended that the models would be useful for artists and “in places where it is too difficult to procure subjects [for dissection]”, but they also claimed that real corpses were “indispensable for those who wish to learn anatomy thoroughly”.15 This was echoed in another 1825 report by the Academy of Medicine, which stated that the models could be useful to medical students for “preliminary studies”—but not, presumably, as a full replacement of corpses.16 Thus, acclaimed medical teachers and scientific experts supported the models’ claims to accuracy, but they also limited models’ claims to utility.

Anatomical education and the problem of corpse supply

  • 17 For other modellers who sought customers abroad see e.g. BRESADOLA Marco, “Modellare il corpo. Giov (...)
  • 18 BUKLIJAS Tatjana, “Cultures of Death and Politics of Corpse Supply, Anatomy in Vienna, 1848–1914”, (...)
  • 19 FLINT Austin, qtd. from WARNER John Harley, Against the Spirit of System: The French Impulse in Nin (...)
  • 20 WARNER John Harley, Against the Spirit of System, op. cit., p. 35.
  • 21 Ibid., p. 67.
  • 22 Ibid., p. 71.
  • 23 Ibid., p. 196.
  • 24 House of Commons, Select Committee on Anatomy, Report from the Select Committee on Anatomy, London, (...)
  • 25 Ibid., pp. 8-9.

13Another important aspect of Auzoux’s marketing strategy was to search for opportunities abroad.17 London in particular seemed a strategic location given the shortage of bodies for medical study in Britain in the early nineteenth century. In the 1820s, the Paris medical school was famous for putting the body (both living and dead) at the centre of medical teaching. Dissection and clinical observation were core elements of study, and the republican government after the French Revolution had enabled access to dead bodies by naming the Hôtel-Dieu and the Charité official providers to the medical school in 1798.18 The ample supply with bodies made Paris a Mecca for medical students from abroad. John Harley Warner has documented how in the early nineteenth century numerous students from the United States who had previously studied in Edinburgh and London came to Paris where corpses were plentiful and cheap (although students were simultaneously warned that the city was full of “temptations to pleasure and vice”).19 In 1806, one American student reported that in Paris, “those expenses … which attend the study of Anatomy are next to nothing”.20 Britain remained an important centre for medical study: American medical travellers praised London for its great hospitals (such as Guy’s, St Thomas’s, St Bart’s) and for its “elegant museums” such as the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.21 They recognized the skills and erudition of British medical clinicians and scholars. However, access to bodies, and expenses thereof, were the decisive factors which led most Americans to spend significantly more time in Paris than in London. In 1848, still, an American student in Europe reported that “As for anatomical facilities, there is not a medical school, in any village in the United States, however small, which does not afford subjects for dissection cheaper and in great[er] abundance than either King’s College, or University College, or any other College in London […] for what they were paying for a single lower extremity in London, they might have dissected in Paris, from the first of November to the middle of April, […] and had their knives regularly sharpened into the bargain”.22 But American students were not the only ones seeking better medical education in France. The English medical press equally noted how many British students went to Paris in search of dissection experience: “hundreds of English students” went to Paris “seeking for those advantages which are denied them at home”.23 The shortage of bodies for medical instruction in Britain led to unsavoury practices of “bodysnatching”. Enterprising individuals stole the bodies of the recently deceased to supply anatomy schools with material, much to the dismay of relatives and the general public. The joint problems of anatomical education and bodysnatching became sufficiently pressing to spur the British government into action. A select committee was set up to “inquire into the manner of obtaining Subjects for Dissection in the Schools of Anatomy, and into the State of the Law affecting the Persons employed in obtaining or dissecting Bodies”.24 For its inquiry, the committee questioned a wide range of practitioners, including prominent teachers of medicine and surgery such as President of the Royal College of Surgeons Sir Astley Cooper, but also two (anonymous) bodysnatchers. In their final report of 1828, the select committee recommended the system used by the Paris dissecting schools as a model for reform in Britain.25

  • 26 TOPHAM Jonathan, “Science, Print, and Crossing Borders: Importing French Science Books into Britain (...)
  • 27 DEPPING Georges Bernard, L’Angleterre, ou description historique et topographique du Royaume-Uni de (...)
  • 28 “Le bruit de cette condamnation, et celui qui se répandit de semblables assassinats commis en Angle (...)

14This marked difference in resources caused tensions between French and British medical teachers. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the relationship between British and French medical community was characterized in even measure by collaboration and competition. As Jonathan Topham has shown, even during the Napoleonic Wars, when a trade embargo between the two countries theoretically should have made any exchange of goods impossible, medical and scientific books still travelled in both directions.26 However, the imbalance in access to corpses was noted not just by British physicians who lamented the fact that British students felt compelled to travel to Paris to study anatomy. The French also noted the problems of their British counterparts. The shortage of corpses for dissection was reported not just in medical journals, but also in the general press and other publications for the general public which reported that due to popular “superstition”, British doctors often were restricted to working on the bodies of executed criminals, or had to resort to employing “bodysnatchers”.27 The scandal caused by the bodysnatchers Burke and Hare in Edinburgh in 1828, who procured bodies by murdering the living rather than stealing the dead, was reported by the French press, as was the ensuing public panic of being “burked” (être burké).28 Given these reports, Auzoux would have been well aware of the problems of British students to obtain bodies for anatomical studies, and in 1831 he travelled to London to demonstrate his models and to offer them as potential solutions to the problem of corpse supply.

Demonstration and performance in London, 1831-32

  • 29 BERKOWITZ Carin, “The Beauty of Anatomy: Visual Displays and Surgical Education in Early Nineteenth (...)
  • 30 Literary Gazette, 1825, qtd. in BATES A.W., “‘Indecent and Demoralising Representations’: Public An (...)
  • 31 See e.g. SCHAFFER Simon, “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, Histo (...)
  • 32 For the early years of the Royal Institution see e.g. BERMAN Morris, Social Change & Scientific Org (...)
  • 33 LIGHTMAN Bernard, “Lecturing in the spatial economy of science”, in FYFE Aileen and LIGHTMAN Bernar (...)
  • 34 BATES A.W., “‘Indecent and Demoralising Representations’”, op. cit., p. 9.

15Auzoux’s reception in London by the medical profession was shaped by a range of different and potentially conflicting attitudes to artificial anatomies and their public display. British medical teachers frequently employed a wide range of teaching tools in their lectures. Carin Berkowitz has highlighted the central role of visual aids for medical pedagogy in early nineteenth-century London. Surgeon-anatomist Charles Bell, for instance, used a combination of visual aids such as blackboard sketches, specimens and models in his lectures, and thought carefully about the production and use of illustrations in his publications for students and scholars.29 Wax anatomies were popular, but frequently criticized as mere entertainment, and morally suspect. As Alan Bates has shown, in the early decades of the nineteenth century Britons were suspicious of continental anatomical waxworks, which were denounced in the press as “filthy French figure[s]”.30 At the same time, displays of nature and science were central to nineteenth-century British culture. London in particular may have lacked the dissection opportunities of Paris, but it was the world’s capital of popular science. Public lecturers had made a living presenting natural philosophical lectures, demonstrations and experiments to paying audiences since the eighteenth century.31 Following the lead of the Royal Institution since 1799, during the early decades of the century numerous new institutions were founded to communicate science to the masses through public lectures: not just the Royal Institution, but also the London Institution, the Russell Institution, the Surrey Institution, and a range of Mechanics’ Institutes.32 The “season” for public lectures usually lasted from November to June.33 Many of these public lecturers also travelled around the country, as their eighteenth-century predecessors had done. Some institutions offered opportunities for laypeople to acquaint themselves not just with physical and chemical phenomena, but also with human anatomy: Birkbeck’s London Mechanics’ Institution for instance advertised a course in human anatomy in 1827, which included a demonstration of a dissected body.34

  • 35 See e.g. LIGHTMAN Bernard, “Spectacle in Leicester Square: James Wyld’s Great Globe, 1851-1861”, in (...)
  • 36 BATES A.W., “‘Indecent and Demoralising Representations’”, op. cit., p. 7.
  • 37 Letter by Bouché to Auzoux père, n.d. but 1832, Archives Nationales, AP 242, Box 4, dossier 8.
  • 38 “Gift of His Majesty to King’s College, London”, The Athæneum 224 (11 Feb 1832), p. 98.
  • 39 “Extraordinary Anatomical Machine”, report of the Westminster Medical Society (4 February 1832), Lo (...)
  • 40 See e.g. Westmister Review 16 (1832), p. 490.

16In this context of activity, the location chosen by Auzoux for his stay in London is significant. In 1831 the medical entrepreneur took up residence in Leicester Square. This was a suitable location for the promotion of his new medical technologies, as the neighborhood was at the time home to a peculiar combination of public spectacle and medical culture. The square had hosted renowned anatomists and surgeons such as William Cruikshank and Charles Bell, and had until recently been the location of the Hunter brothers’ famous anatomy school and museum, as well as a museum of natural curiosities, the Holophusikon.35 In the year of Auzoux’s arrival the square had also seen the display of the murderers John Bishop and Thomas Williams, London’s answer to Edinburgh’s Burke and Hare. Bishop and Williams had been executed after the murder of an unnamed “Italian Boy” for dissection purposes. Their bodies in turn were dissected at King’s College and the Windmill Street anatomy theatre. Afterwards, “immense crowds” went to see their remains on display in Leicester Square, including wax portraits of their heads, with “[t]heir own hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, preserved and arranged in their respective places”.36 Surrounded by other shows and spectacles such as these, the French doctor nevertheless chose to demonstrate his models to a more select audience, targeting doctors in particular. Auzoux opened his apartment to interested visitors for only one hour each day. He spent the rest of his time exhibiting his inventions at specialist institutions such as the Royal Institution, the Westminster Medical Society, and the Harveian Society. Auzoux’s young assistant Bouché reported home that English physicians were “eager” to see the papier-maché models, and that the artificial anatomies were the talk of the London salons. (Only the food, young Bouché complained, was “ridiculous”).37 Auzoux’s models were received favourably even in the highest echelons of British society. The royal physician Sir Henry Halford recommended the full-scale human model to the King himself for its utility as an “accessory means of instruction in our schools of medicine”, and the monarch ordered a copy to be sent to the newly founded King’s College in London.38 Responses to Auzoux’s models were generally positive, both in the medical and the general press. According to the London Medical Journal, for instance, he received “the most flattering marks of approbation”.39 Local newspapers, following the royal lead, praised the Frenchman’s “ingenious” models, especially in discussions of the role of dissection for medical education and the problem of bodysnatching.40

17The features of Auzoux’s public displays in London were carefully chosen to appeal to his intended medical audience. He offered no demonstrations for the general public except in venues considered to provide respectable scientific education such as the Royal Institution. Auzoux used his former factory worker and assistant Bouché as living proof of his claim that anyone could learn anatomy with the help of his models. However, the entrepreneur was careful not to claim that his models could replace work with real corpses entirely:

  • 41 “Anatomical Model, invented by M. Auzoux”, London Medical and Physical Journal, New Series 12 (1832 (...)

M. Auzoux […] does not presume that the study of his model can supersede the necessity for dissection; but there can be no doubt that, by its assistance, the student may acquire a perfect knowledge of anatomy, at much less expense of time than he could by anatomical lectures or dissection alone. One great advantage this contrivance offers, is that the relative situation of every part of the human body may be repeatedly and deliberately viewed, so that this most important part of the science of anatomy may be indelibly fixed upon the memory.41

18This last claim, about the models’ “dissectability”, was central to Auzoux’s demonstration, which at its core was about the process of dismantling and reassembling the model. This feature of his demonstrations came to the fore in two accounts of the appearance Auzoux made in front of the Westminster Medical Society on 4 February 1832, published in two new and reform-minded medical journals, the Lancet (founded in 1823) and the London Medical and Surgical Journal (founded in 1828).

  • 42 “Extraordinary Anatomical Machine”, London Medical and Surgical Journal 1/2 (11 February 1832), pp. (...)
  • 43 Ibid.
  • 44 Ibid.

19Auzoux’s supporter within the society, a Mr. Costello, introduced the model as “the most extraordinary representation of the human body which was ever invented”, a mechanism of “originality, beauty, accuracy, and extreme fidelity” which “wonderfully facilitated the study of anatomy”.42 Costello confidently proposed that using this model, even “a stranger to anatomy” could “in three months acquire a knowledge of the muscles, […] arteries, veins, nerves, lymphatics, […]”.43 In his demonstration Auzoux was accompanied by his friend and former fellow student, urologist Dr Jean Civiale, who acted as his preceptor. According to the description of the meeting, “the removal of the artificial body from its case […] occupied some time”.44 Auzoux took care to build up the suspense, starting with only one part of a model: an arm. The display was met with disapproval by one member of the audience who considered that medical debates should be the priority for the meetings of the Society:

Here Mr. Costello produced only a part of the work in question—the arm—which even of itself was an ingenious production. Upon going into a demonstration of the details, some objection was expressed by Dr. Somerville, who said that however pleased he might be with the exhibition, he had come with a view of hearing some medical discussion, and therefore was desirous that the usual time should be allotted to the debates.

  • 45 “Clastic anatomy. Proposals to teach anatomy by means of solid pieces capable of being mounted and (...)

20However, Dr Somerville’s objections were not shared by his fellow society members, who were eager to see the demonstration: “This interruption met with much disapprobation from the majority of the assembly, whose interest now became more excited by the appearance of the whole figure”.45

  • 46 Ibid., p. 705.
  • 47 Ibid.

21When the full human model finally arrived it did not disappoint, and the discussion following the demonstration was lively. Dr Somerville, still combative, strongly denied any claims that models could replace dissection entirely. Any such suggestions, he argued, would only be fodder to those public voices in the debate preceding the Anatomy Act which denied the utility of dissection altogether.46 However, he was a lone dissenting voice in the meeting, as his peers applauded the French models and their maker. The anonymous doctor who wrote the report for the Lancet claimed that “It afforded us great pleasure to observe the facility with which the dissection might be accomplished, and in some parts the tout ensemble of the ‘region’ was striking for fidelity of imitation, and … perfect accuracy of execution”.47

Conclusions

  • 48 For an example of models’ utility for professional training being challenged due to their popular a (...)

22The uses of anatomical models both as tools of education and as means for entertainment posed a considerable challenge to model makers. Potentially, models’ popularity with the general public could be used to call into question their suitability for serious instruction.48 Thus, model entrepreneurs had to judge modes of model marketing and display well. In London, Auzoux was careful to distance his own demonstrations from popular public displays in and around Leicester Square. He restricted access to the models considerably, only opening his apartment to visitors for one hour every day. Beyond this, he actively targeted renowned physicians, and used the meetings of medical societies as platforms to publicize his products. This strategy paid off, especially when the King himself became a customer through royal physician Henry Halford. However, restricting his marketing efforts to an exclusive, elite audience did not mean refraining from live performance. As much as in Auzoux’s public lectures to general audiences in Paris, in London in front of medical experts live demonstration was a central element of model display. These demonstrations were carefully choreographed, beginning with a single arm before moving on to the life-sized complete human model. This display did not fail to take effect. Despite the medical profession’s avowed rejection of popular showmanship, many British physicians admired Auzoux’s performances. Thus, the case of the papier-maché models in London highlights forcefully that historians need to be careful not to conflate live performance with quackery, and to pay attention to the role of performance in the realm of professional, orthodox medicine.

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Notes

1 For the history of anatomical models see e.g. LEMIRE Michel, Artistes et Mortels, Paris, Chabaud, 1990; ALBERTI Samuel J.M.M., “Wax Bodies, Art and Anatomy in Victorian Medical Museums”, Museum History Journal 2/1 (2009): 7-36; CRASKE Matthew, “‘Unwholesome’ and ‘pornographic’. A Reassessment of the Place of Rackstrow’s Museum in the Story of Eighteenth-Century Anatomical Collection and Exhibition”, Journal of the History of Collections 23 (2011), pp. 75-99; DACOME Lucia, “Women, Wax and Anatomy in the ‘century of things’”, Renaissance Studies 21 (2007), pp. 522-50; HOPWOOD Nick, “Plastic publishing in embryology”, in DE CHADAREVIAN Soraya and HOPWOOD Nick (eds), Models: The Third Dimension of Science, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 170-206; HOPWOOD Nick, “Artist versus anatomist, models against dissection, Paul Zeiller of Munich and the Revolution of 1848”, Medical History 51 (2007), pp. 279-308; HOPWOOD Nick, Embryos in wax: Models from the Ziegler studio, Cambridge, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 2002; MAERKER Anna, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775-1815, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2011; MAZZOLINI Renato G., “Plastic anatomies and artificial dissections”, in DE CHADAREVIAN Soraya and HOPWOOD Nick (eds), Models: The Third Dimension of Science, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 43-70; MESSBARGER Rebecca, The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2010; OLSZEWSKI Margaret, Designer Nature: The Papier-mâché Botanical Teaching Models of Dr Auzoux in Nineteenth-Century France, Great Britain and America, Ph.D dissertation, Cambridge University, 2009; PANZANELLI Roberta (ed.), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2008.

2 For demonstrations of anatomical models for visitors to the Florentine museum La Specola around 1800 see MAERKER Anna, Model Experts, op. cit., Chapter 4.

3 For the use of “obstetric phantoms” in the eighteenth century see for instance GELBART Nina Rattner, The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1998; LAWRENCE Ghislaine, “An obstetric phantom”, Lancet 358/9296 (2001), p. 1916.

4 For Fontana’s wood anatomy see e.g. CONTARDI Simone, La Casa di Salomone a Firenze. L’Imperiale e Reale Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale (1775-1801), Florence, Olschki, 2002; MAZZOLINI Renato G., “Plastic anatomies and artificial dissections”, op. cit.; MAERKER Anna, Model Experts, op. cit., Chapter 4.

5 AMELINE Jean-François, Observations sur les pièces d’anatomie de M. le Dr Auzoux, Caen, impr. de Bonneserre, 1825.

6 DICKINSON George, English Papier-Mâché: Its Origin, Development and Decline, London, Courier Press, 1925.

7 On the life and work of Auzoux see e.g. DAVIS Audrey B., “Louis Thomas Jerome Auzoux and the papier maché anatomical model”, in by PIACENTI C. (ed.), La ceroplastica nella scienza e nell’ arte. Atti del I congresso internazionale, Firenze 3-7 giugno, 1975, Florence, Olschki, 1977, pp. 257-79; OLSZEWSKI Margaret, Designer Nature, The Papier-mâché Botanical Teaching Models of Dr Auzoux in Nineteenth-Century France, Great Britain and America, Ph.D dissertation, Cambridge University, 2009; PAIN Dominique, L’Anatomie clastique. Une affaire normande au XIXe siècle, MD thesis, Caen, 1991.

8 AUZOUX L., Leçons élémentaires d’anatomie et de physiologie humaine et comparée, second revised edition, Paris, 1858, p. v; DUNGLISON Robley and DUNGLISON Richard James, A Dictionary of Medical Science, new edition, Philadelphia, 1874, p. 50.

9 Medical and Surgical Reporter 17 (1867), p. 496.

10 ROBERTSON Theodore, The Whole French Language, New York, 1856, p. 450.

11 For a more detailed analysis of Auzoux’s marketing strategies see MAERKER Anna, “Anatomizing the Trade: Designing and Marketing Anatomical Models as Medical Technologies, c.1700-1900”, Technology & Culture 54/3 (2013), pp. 531-62.

12 Medical and Surgical Reporter 17 (1867), p. 496.

13 For a general account of Clot’s activities in Egypt see CLOT Antoine, Mémoires de A.-B. Clot Bey, edited by Jacques Tagher, Cairo, Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1949.

14 Académie royale des sciences, Rapport fait par le Commission nommée pour examiner une pièce d’anatomie artificielle de M. Auzoux (séance du 10 avril 1825), reprinted in Auzoux, Notice sur les préparations artificielles de M. Auzoux, Paris, Feugueray, 1825, pp. 24-6, here p. 26.

15 Académie de médecine, Rapport fait par le Commission nommée pour examiner les pièces d’anatomie artificielle de M. Auzoux (séance générale du 5 novembre 1823), Paris, Feugueray, pp. 2-3.

16 Académie Royale de Médecine, Rapport de la Commission chargée d’examiner la pièce d’anatomie artificielle destinée à représenter toutes les parties du corps humain, exécutée pour le Gouvernement par M. Auzoux, Docteur en Médecine (Séance générale du 5 juillet 1825), reprinted in AUZOUX, Notice sur les préparations artificielles de M. Auzoux, Paris, Feugueray, 1825, p. 31.

17 For other modellers who sought customers abroad see e.g. BRESADOLA Marco, “Modellare il corpo. Giovanni Tumiati e lo studio dell’anatomia alla fine del Settecento”, in BRESADOLA M., CARDINALI S., ZANARDI P. (eds), La casa delle scienze. Palazzo Paradiso e i luoghi del sapere nella Ferrara del Settecento, Padua, Il Poligrafo, 2006, pp. 157-84.

18 BUKLIJAS Tatjana, “Cultures of Death and Politics of Corpse Supply, Anatomy in Vienna, 1848–1914”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82/3 (2008), pp. 570-607. See also WEINER Dora B., The Citizen-Patient in Revolutionary and Imperial Paris, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 181-3.

19 FLINT Austin, qtd. from WARNER John Harley, Against the Spirit of System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-century American Medicine, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 57.

20 WARNER John Harley, Against the Spirit of System, op. cit., p. 35.

21 Ibid., p. 67.

22 Ibid., p. 71.

23 Ibid., p. 196.

24 House of Commons, Select Committee on Anatomy, Report from the Select Committee on Anatomy, London, s.n., 1828, p. 3.

25 Ibid., pp. 8-9.

26 TOPHAM Jonathan, “Science, Print, and Crossing Borders: Importing French Science Books into Britain, 1789-1815”, in LIVINGSTONE David N. and WITHERS Charles (eds), Geographies of Nineteenth Century Science, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011, pp. 311-44.

27 DEPPING Georges Bernard, L’Angleterre, ou description historique et topographique du Royaume-Uni de la Grande Bretagne, 1824, pp. 171-2; CHARLES-MALO M., Panorama d’Angleterre, ou éphémerides anglaises, politiques, et littéraires, volume 2, Paris, Plancher, 1818, p. 322.

28 “Le bruit de cette condamnation, et celui qui se répandit de semblables assassinats commis en Angleterre, répandit dans les deux royaumes une impression profonde; la crainte d’être burké tout vivant remplaça celle d’être livré après sa mort aux chirurgiens: chaque jour, les journaux racontaient une foule d’anecdotes, plus effrayantes les unes que les autres ...”, DE FAYET Auguste Nougarède, Lettres sur l’Angleterre et sur la France du mois d’avril au mois de novembre 1845, volume 1, Paris, Amyot, 1846, p. 419.

29 BERKOWITZ Carin, “The Beauty of Anatomy: Visual Displays and Surgical Education in Early Nineteenth-Century London”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85/2 (2011), pp. 248-78.

30 Literary Gazette, 1825, qtd. in BATES A.W., “‘Indecent and Demoralising Representations’: Public Anatomy Museums in mid-Victorian England”, Medical History 52/1 (2008), pp. 1-22, here p. 8.

31 See e.g. SCHAFFER Simon, “Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century”, History of Science 21 (1983), pp. 1-43; STEWART Larry, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992.

32 For the early years of the Royal Institution see e.g. BERMAN Morris, Social Change & Scientific Organization: The Royal Institution 1799-1844, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1978.

33 LIGHTMAN Bernard, “Lecturing in the spatial economy of science”, in FYFE Aileen and LIGHTMAN Bernard (eds), Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp. 97-134, here p. 100.

34 BATES A.W., “‘Indecent and Demoralising Representations’”, op. cit., p. 9.

35 See e.g. LIGHTMAN Bernard, “Spectacle in Leicester Square: James Wyld’s Great Globe, 1851-1861”, in KEMBER Joe, PLUNKETT John and SULLIVAN Jill A. (eds), Popular Exhibitions, Science and Showmanship, 1840-1910, London, Pickering and Chatto, 2012, pp. 19-39.

36 BATES A.W., “‘Indecent and Demoralising Representations’”, op. cit., p. 7.

37 Letter by Bouché to Auzoux père, n.d. but 1832, Archives Nationales, AP 242, Box 4, dossier 8.

38 “Gift of His Majesty to King’s College, London”, The Athæneum 224 (11 Feb 1832), p. 98.

39 “Extraordinary Anatomical Machine”, report of the Westminster Medical Society (4 February 1832), London Medical and Surgical Journal 1 (1832), pp. 56-60.

40 See e.g. Westmister Review 16 (1832), p. 490.

41 “Anatomical Model, invented by M. Auzoux”, London Medical and Physical Journal, New Series 12 (1832), p. 436.

42 “Extraordinary Anatomical Machine”, London Medical and Surgical Journal 1/2 (11 February 1832), pp. 56-60, here p. 56.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 “Clastic anatomy. Proposals to teach anatomy by means of solid pieces capable of being mounted and dismounted”, The Lancet I (11 February 1832), pp. 703-705, here p. 704.

46 Ibid., p. 705.

47 Ibid.

48 For an example of models’ utility for professional training being challenged due to their popular appeal see e.g. MAERKER Anna, “Florentine anatomical models and the challenge of medical authority in late-eighteenth-century Vienna”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43/3 (2012), pp. 730-40.

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Anna Maerker, « Between Profession and Performance: Displays of Anatomical Models in London, 1831-32 »Histoire, médecine et santé, 5 | 2014, 47-59.

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Anna Maerker, « Between Profession and Performance: Displays of Anatomical Models in London, 1831-32 »Histoire, médecine et santé [En ligne], 5 | printemps 2014, mis en ligne le 19 mai 2017, consulté le 28 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/hms/627 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/hms.627

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Anna Maerker

Anna Maerker is a senior lecturer in history of science at King’s College, London. She studied physics and history of science in Regensburg, Cambridge and Cornell. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Her book, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775-1815 (Manchester University Press, 2011), explores the history of the anatomical waxes at La Specola and at the Josephinum.

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