From the eighteenth century to the present, public exhibitions of human anatomy have proved popular with a wide range of audiences, being marketed as both educational and entertaining.In Anatomy as Spectacle, Elizabeth Stephens takes us on a tour of freak shows, anatomical Venuses, museums doubling as dubious sex clinics, and the recentBody Worldsdisplay, tracing the fascinating history of these exhibitions that gained popularity alongside the professionalization of medicine and rise of the popular spectacle.
Far from marginal, public exhibitions of the body have much to tell us about the history of popular culture and medicine, and Anatomy as Spectacle situates these displays as productive cultural spaces for the emergence of new ideas about bodily health.
Elizabeth Stephensis an Australian Research Council fellow at the University of Queenland.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1.The Docile Subject of Anatomy: Gynomorphic Waxworks in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Public Exhibitions
2. Lost Manhood: Turn-of-the-Century “Museums of Anatomy” and the Spermatorrhoea Epidemic
3. From the Freak to the Disabled Person: Anatomical Difference as Public Spectacle and Private Condition
4. Inventing the Bodily Interior: Écorché Figures in Early Modern Anatomy and von Hagens’Body Worlds
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
“A pleasure to read, this well-written book offers many thoughtful and provocative reflections on anatomy and exhibition and will appeal to a wide range of scholars concerned with disability, culture, and medical history.”
“A strong story, well documented and scholarly.”
“Anatomy of Spectaclemakes an important contribution to the history of science by underscoring the crucial place of cultural history within the discipline. Sl<
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