Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 5 No. 1 March 1992 ISSN 0952-1909 Michel Foucault, Body Politics and the Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy* JAN C.C. RUPP Abstract The New Science and the arts flourished vigorously in the seventeenth century Netherlands. Of special importance were the anatomical theatres in Leiden, Delft and Amsterdam. These theatres were important cultural centres in the sense that they were centres of arts and sciences. meeting places for artists and scientists. and places with a public function. What role did anatomy played in the rise and expansion of modern science. Many scholars assume that religion, and more generally speaking, morality, was strongly opposed to anatomy, but then it is difficult to explain how anatomy and anatomical theatres could be of such central significance. It is Michel Foucault's thesis. however. that there was no hindrance by religion and morality, but an antagonism between two medical discourses. the clinical (life) and the anatomical (death). This thesis is tested by exploring anatomy practices and regulations in early-modern Italy, Holland, England and France. The results indicate that, not only antagonism between medical discourses, but also conflicting opinions on teaching and the conditions for scientific progress. and. most of all. the interest taken by government in anatomy, played a part. The question as to whether moral standards were a hindrance to the advance of science. was primarily dependent on body politics. Introduction The New Science and the arts were flourishing vigorously in the seventeenth century Netherlands. Comparable with Italy, but different from England and France with their Royal Academies, the cities in Holland were economic, as well as political and cultural centres of the nation. They played a major part in the establishment of universities and athenea, but also of anatomy theatres, as is confirmed by contemporary authors such as Johan de la Court.! Such theatres were founded in more than twelve cities. Of special importance were those in Leiden (1597), Delft (1614) and Amsterdam (1619).? They became important cultural centres and greatly contributed to the production, diffusion and consumption of the arts and sciences." Learned men organized scientific meetings and stimulated the Practice of the New Science at or around the anatomical theatre. Scientists, who contributed to the advance of the new science, made important discoveries and had an international reputation, were connected with each of them (Delft: Reinier de Graaf and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek; Leiden: Johannes Van Horne, Franciscus Deleboe Sylvius, Herman Boerhaave and Bernardus Albinus; Amsterdam: Nicolaas Tulp, Frederik Ruysch, and Johannes Swammerdam).‘ The32 Jan C.C. Rupp anatomy theatre was one of the places for the demonstration and discussion of new findings and experiments. In the same building weekly anatomy lessons were given to chirurgy apprentices, medical students and midwives. The theatre had a scientific library and a museum in which a collection of ‘curiosities’, that is to say of objects of natural history and of natural science were exhibited. Important works of art were produced connected with the theatre. not only paintings of dissections (such as Rembrandt's ‘Dr Tulp’)), anatomy books such as Bidloo's Anatomia illustrated by the painter Gerard de Lairesse, and Anatomy Cabinets like Ruysch’s. but also the Leiden’ Vanitas paintings and the Delft’ Church interiors.® It was also a museum for art collections. The anatomy theatres were public cultural centres. The dissections of the dead body of a criminal were annual manifestations around Christmas-time for a general public of 300 to 600 people, consisting of officials, medical doctors, chirurgians, students and other interested persons. A dissection was carried out according toa special programme, in which experiments with (living) animals were included, and could last for some weeks. The museum, library and botanical garden were also open to the general public. Amongst all strata of the population, there was more interest in the anatomical demonstrations and for the collections than for any other event. In this paper the question is posed about the part anatomy played in the rise of modern science. It is known that many scholars assume that religion, and more generally speaking, morality, was strongly opposed to anatomy, but then it is difficult to explain how anatomy and anatomy theatres could be of such central significance. It is Michel Foucault's thesis. however, which in our opinion is highly worthwhile, that there was no hindrance by religion and morality, but an antagonism between two medical discourses, the clinical (life) and the anatomical discourse (death).° This thesis will be tested by exploring (i) anatomy discourses and (ii) regulations in early-modern Italy, Holland, England and France. Religion and the Rise of Modern Anatomy’ In addition to astronomers and mathematicians, medical men have generally been of great importance in the rise of modern science. Within medical science, the development of clinical teaching (the prescription of diets, the administering of medicines) and of anatomy (surgery) played a crucial role. In the history of science literature the dominant opinion assumes that there have been many ages of very slow progress in the sciences since the writings of Hippocrates and Galen in Antiquity. The original texts by the classical Greek and Arab scholars became available in the 15th century. They were againThe Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy 33 translated and encouraged. in particular at the Italian universities of Bologna and Padua. Clinical (bedside) teaching and anatomy flourished at Padua. The great complete Latin edition of the works of Galen appeared in 1541, two years before De Fabrica corporis humanae by Andreas Vesalius, the work that is regarded as the starting point of modern medicine. Vesalius ‘revised. and almost re-wrote the translation of three treatises by Galen’ for this work.* Vesalius, professor in anatomy at Padua, was, after Modino. the first medical scholar who conducted the (public) anatomical dissection with his own hands and based his anatomical knowledge on direct observation. In this way he discovered many errors in the books of Galen, who probably dissected only monkeys and pigs. The symbol] of this difference as represented by Vesalius himself is the dissection of the arm.° Vesalius broke very consciously with the tradition that had developed in earlier centuries when the actual dissection was done by an ordinary (barber)-surgeon, the lector read from a text (by Galen) what the surgeon was doing, and the professor in anatomy, either on that day or at another time, held his philosophical lecture. '° Dissections were conducted mainly on the corpses of criminals in the case of the yearly public dissection, but also on other cadavers in the case of a legal problem (such as a suspected murder by poisoning) or a medical problem (as to what was the cause ofa death: sections were even conducted on the bodies of popes). After, or even during the anatomical demonstration on the criminal body, several animals were dissected and vivisected (we see dogs and monkeys on the frontispieces of many anatomy books). The anatomy theatre gradually acquired a permanent base. In Padua one of the first permanent theatres was established. Leiden soon followed (1579).!! Many scholars have sought the reason for the long-lasting'stagnation’ in the field of medicine, especially in anatomy ina presupposed negative attitude of the church towards the opening of dead bodies, especially human bodies. The theory is that every religion holds the dead body as something sacred. C.D. O'Malley, for example, takes this view with Tespect to the Renaissance and early modern time. This argument is used to explain the many complaints about the shortage of corpses the anatomists would have had from the fifteenth century onwards.'?In the seventeenth century one finds a similar opinion that in the very old times, however brave and intelligent and however much inclined to the knowledge and the art of anatomy he might have been, nobody could have done great things, because dead bodies were regarded as sacred and the hands that touched them as contaminated: that is why so many cleanings, sprinklings and solemn purifications were installed by the overbelieving religion of the ancients." In a recent book on Medieval anatomy '', Marie-Christine Pouchelle emphasizes with a good sense of drama:34 Jan C.C. Rupp It is well known that in the Middle Ages the cutting open of bodies in search for knowledge was subject to taboos deeply rooted in the mentality of the time. It could not be accepted (and is it even wholly accepted nowadays, except in strictly scientific circles?) that. for sake for knowledge, one had the right to invade a body. a microcosm in which dwelt a soul. or to dissect with an intrusive knife the most intimate parts of areal person. And: Ifthe anatomist trespassed radically on the integrity of a corpse, the surgeon felt the body's vital forces, even the soul itself, glow through his fingers with its blood.'5 Pouchelle, however, does not give any indication in the works of the French medieval anatomist Mondeville, who is the central person in her book, that bears witness of this presupposed religious taboo against dissection. According to Ludwig Edelstein, various testimonies report unquestionably that dissection not only took place in the Middle Ages. but also that Alexandrian physicians dissected and vivisected humans at around the start of our era. Nevertheless, most scholars claim that in Greece dissection was utterly unthinkable. Religious and magical concepts. veneration of the dead, and dread of the corpse were believed to have made dissection impossible. Likewise, vivisection seemed unthinkable for humane reasons. One was unwilling to attribute so much cruelty to physicians, the helpers. The accounts of dissection and vivisection were declared to be wicked inventions by which one school sought (o discredit the other." The reports were not believed to be true, because for the ancients reverence for the dead was a duty of the most binding sort. It was everyone's duty to see to it that a corpse was buried. and there existed no greater obligation toward relatives. How then can it be possible that the ancients ravaged dead bodies in order to find out the structure of human organs. (...) The Soul finds no peace in the underworld, until the body is safely interred. This repose must never be disturbed.'” In Edelstein’s opinion, the question as to whether it was possible or impossible to dissect and vivisect, depends not on ideas held by ‘the superstitious masses’, but by the discourses of the scholars and scientists. In contradiction to his own thesis, however, he states, in respect of an earlier epoch, that Homeric physicians did not dissect because investigation for the sake of knowledge was still far from the naive mind of man, and above all because respect for the dead and dread of cadavers were then too ‘great for men to dare to interfere with them. One might offer up a human sacrifice to the God if he demanded it, one might leave a dead enemy or a criminal unburied, but one could not force oneself, as yet, to the extent of cutting open the dead body. Alengthy development was Fequired before the religious and magical opposition was overcome. and before dissections were thus. at a certain ™moment, rendered feasible.'*The Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy 35 Foucault's Thesis It is Ludwig Edelstein’s main thesis that the demand for dead bodies depends on the medical discourse, on the advance of science and education and the supply of dead bodies on the interest taken in medicine by the state. Despite all obstacles. even medieval plysicians were able. through the intervention of the state or robbery. to obtain the cadavers necessary for dissection. In the Renaissance and in modern times they succeeded in the same way in dissecting. Thus it was not impossible in Greece either. It must be added that dissections were certainly not more frequently performed in Greece than at the beginning of the Renaissance and in the Middle Ages, perhaps even more seldom. This seems to follow from the fact that the necessity for dissections was by no means universally recognized. Only the Dogmatic school of Alexandria insisted on them. while both the Empiricist and the Methodist schools rejected them. Teaching was done largely by demonstration and did not require many corpses. '* Michel Foucault, in his classic book The Birth of the Clinic,?° formulated the hypothesis that it was neither religion nor the church that prohibited the development of the anatomy of dead bodies but rather the so called ‘clinical discourse’ which. in his opinion, was the dominant medical discourse until the end of the eighteenth century. For the eighteenth century and for a whole tradition that was already familiar in the Renaissance, the knowledge of life was based on the essence of the living, since it, too. is no more than a manifestation of it. That is why one never attempted to conceive of disease other than ”! on the basis of the living. or of its (mechanical) models and (humoral. chemical) constituents; vitalism and anti-vitalism both sprang from this fundamental anteriority of life in the experience of disease.” It is at the end of the eighteenth century that such men as Bichat. came to formulate a completely opposite discourse (clinical-anatomical medicine), which implicates an epistemological break, that only at death disease and life speak their truth. Until that time disease was seen as something evil coming from the outside into the body and death as the opposite of life: in other words, while the eyes of doctors were turned towards elimination of disease, towards cure, towards life, death was seen as the dark threat in which his knowledge and skill were abolished. as the failure of medicine; now for men like Bichat and Morgagni ‘knowledge of life finds its origin in the destruction of life and in its extreme opposite: it is at death that disease and life speak their truth’ *. This epistemological breaking point is related to Bichat’s finding that on the basis of tissues alone, nature works with extremely simple materials. They are the elements of the organs, but they traverse them, relate them together, and36 Jan C.C, Rupp constitute vast ‘systems’ above them in which the human body finds the concrete forms of its unity.2* Changes in the tissues of (the organs of) the human body are the cause of diseases and at the same time manifestations of the process of dying. Anatomical dissection of the (tissues of the) dead body is necessary to gain true knowledge of the disease and of the death. Prior to that epistemological turning point. anatomy was oriented towards the localization of the disease in the (geography of) the human body. while the clinicians were concentrating on the history of the symptoms of the disease on the surface of the human body and on the classification of correlated symptoms into a system of diseases. Disease is no longer a bundle of characters disseminated here and there over the surface of the body and linked together by statistically observable concomitants and successions; it is a set of forms and deformations. figures and accidents and of displaced, destroyed, or modified elements bound together in sequence according to a geography that can be followed step by step. It is no longer a pathological species inserting itself into the body where possible: it is the body itself that has become ill.2> When the insight became general that pathological anatomy is the very fundament of medicine, a whole myth was created as a retrospective justification, the myth that the developments of the new modern insights has been hindered by the old, religious and moral, beliefs, that the doctors in all times had ‘in their depths of their scientific appetite the repressed need to open up corpses’.”6 This myth includes also the rumours about the body snatching practices of Vesalius and anatomists in general. Foucault asserts that, in the eighteenth century, anatomists or clinicians had no difficulty at all in finding corpses. 1 Medical Discourses What kind of evidence has been produced in respect of the question as to whether religion was or was nota hindrance for the development of anatomy? In the first place, it can be said that there was not only a stagnation in medicine, but in astronomy and mathematics as well2’ The collections in the museums of the anatomical theatres, the books written by the anatomists and the connections between medical and other scientists around the theatre, bear witness to the fact that the anatomists and the medical doctors in general saw their activities as part of the New Science and compared their work with that of astronomers, geographers, mathematicians, and physicians. No single clerical or governmental document has been found to the present day in which dissection of human corpses is declared to be forbidden.The Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy 37 The big dispute between Vesalius and his former teacher Sylvius was on the question as to whether Vesalius had wrongly or rightly ‘accused’ Galenus of not having dissected human corpses.** However serious their dispute may have been, dissection of human dead bodies was seen by both men as quite natural and not to be questioned at all. Vesalius mentioned Aristotle and Hippocrates as anatomists who dissected human cadavers, so that one can speak of conflicting opinions, in the old times too, about the usefulness of the anatomy of dead human bodies for medicine, for curing diseases. Autopsy was a very regular practice, as we have already mentioned. What have been found are documents in which dissections are regulated, which points to a practice that already existed. The first documents we know of in which public anatomies are regulated, are from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The first documents on anatomical theatres are from the beginning of the sixteenth century.*° Heckscher mentions such a document in Alessandro Benedetti's (Benedictus’) book Historia corporis humani sive Anatomice, first published in 1497 in Venice. This physician from Verona wrote in Book I, Chapter i (translation by Heckscher): Of the uses of public anatomies, the selection of a cadaver, and the arrangement*' of a temporary theatre. It has come down to us that the very kings, solicitous of the general welfare, took criminals out of prison and dissected them alive, in order that they might probe the secrets of nature and nature's internal cunning while consciousness was still present ~ the location, color, shape, size. arrangement. development. and deterioration of the organs. many of which undergo changes in the dead - and that they might make accurate rather than reverential observations... But this practice our religion forbids. inasmuch as it is of the utmost cruelty and charged with abominations of the torturer, and to die in despair of such torments means the pitful loss of hope ofa future life. Be these usages applied by the barbarians and foreigners that devised them. who takes pleasure in those evildoings and culpabilities. But Iet us more mercifully spare the living and investigate the inmost secrets of nature in the corpses of criminals. In this document the church is seen as forbidding the vivisection of human beings. The ‘barbarians’ are accused of vivisection of criminals, and an already existing practice of public anatomy of dead bodies of criminals is regulated. half an age before Vesalius published his famous book. The reason for vivisection of (criminal) human beings is the search for the most essential forms of life (the secrets of nature while consciousness is present), but this kind of vivisection is, at the same time, regarded as destroying the essence of life (and bad for the reputation of the judges/kings and for the executioners). Edelstein reports testimonies that Alexandrian physicians dissected and vivisected humans. Dissection and vivisection began there in the third century B.C. and was still possible in the second century A.D. In the view of the Dogmatic school of Alexandria, which was influenced38 Jan C.C. Rupp by Aristotle, dissections were useful, because they taught morphological data. but the true substance of life could not be discovered in this way. A dead man still retains the same bodily form, yet he is no longer a human being. ‘Therefore what is important in the living cannot be the shape, which remains in death although the true substance of life has disappeared. Knowledge of the living human being is of fundamental importance. Ifthe nature of man is regarded as changing in death, then vivisection is absolutely necessary. The Empiricist school, however, rejected dissection and vivisection as unnecessary, because what one must know about man can be learned from the living subject during treatment. Moreover, one cannot succeed in vivisection, because a human being dies under the knife. In Alexandria vivisection was practiced on criminal bodies. In Edelstein's view, Thus the decision to be made between dissection and vivisection alsoturns, from being a purely medical problem, into a philosophical and scientific one. Andreas Vesalius In the Preface to his De Fabrica, Vesalius stated that the medical doctors were responsible for the decline of medicine because they no longer did the practical work of nursing, giving medicaments and surgery. But that can not be the reason why Galen did not dissect human dead bodies. Galen dissected and vivisectioned animals with his own hands. The problem seems to be an essentially epistemological one. Vivisection of animals was a practice in Galen's time. Galen refused only to dissect the sexual organs of living animals and ‘seems to have avoided distasteful operations, when: carrying out public vivisections’.* In Vesalius’ time, vivisection of human beings had already been forbidden for a long time. It is known that De Vesalius left out some passages of Fabrica in the second edition, because they reminded one of vivisection.* For Vesalius the importance of the vivisection of animals was not in question. At the end of every public anatomy of a dead (criminal) body he vivisected one or more animals, chiefly repeating Galen's experiments; the first action to demonstrate the structure of the human body, the second the functioning of parts of the (living) body. Vivisection is furthermore useful for surgical practice.** Vesalius carried out experiments by the vivisection of animals on the function of the heart, of the lungs, of the voice (‘It is better to choose a sow on account of the voice. For a dog, after being bound for some time, no matter what you may do to it, finally neither barks nor howls, and so you are sometimes unable to observe the loss or weakening of the voice)**, of fetuses, etcetera. But Vesalius did not Carry out experiments on the functions of the brain.The Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy 39 Well. then in examination of the brain and its functions very little is to be observed by vivisection, since in this matter. whether we like it or not. but merely out of consideration for our native theologians, we would be more guilty of depriving brute creatures of memory. reason and thought. as*’ their structure is the same as that of man. And so the student of anatomy, and he that is practised in dissecting dead bodies, and tainted by no heresy. clearly understands to what risks I should expose myself if ~a thing which I should otherwise above all else gladly do-I were to make any attempt at vivisecting the brain. As far. however. as concerns sense and motion. it is possible to observe that both perish when the brain is removed, And here the same method of experimentation is to be employed as | prescribed in dealing with the nerves. Indeed the question whether the brain has sensation can be investigated in man: for a man whose brain is cut or pressed can tell whether he feels pain or whether he had any sensation at the point where the brain is affected.* In the debate on the essence of life, Vesalius as well as Galen and Aristotle distinguish between ‘the vital spirit’ (the intestines), ‘the natural spirit’ (the heart) and the ‘animal spirit’ (the ‘princeps anima’). In Vesalius's view, the animal spirit is the essence of life in-so-far as it concems ‘memory, reasoning and thinking’, while ‘motions and sensations’ are also part of the life of animals (‘brute creatures). By means of animal vivisection, all functions of the human body including, to some degree, those of the brain (motions and sensations) can be discovered, but not those of ‘memory. thinking and reasoning’.** Although Vesalius may have detected many faultsin Galen's description of the structure of the human body, he does not differ from Galen ona very central issue, namely the importance of the vivisection experiments, nor in the opinion that the brains of animals do not differ from those of man except in quantity. It was a general opinion that the faculties of thinking etc. were situated in one of the ventricles of the brain, an opinion that gets into trouble as soon as it appears that animal brains have the same structure as human ones, as longas one thinks that man differs from animals; animals have a ‘soul too, in-so-far as the ‘princeps anima’ concerns motions and sensations. In Vesalius's discourse on life, disease and death, everything is aimed at life and living, and most of all at touching what is, in his opinion, the essence of human life (thinking etc), but dissecting the brain of animals is forbidden and, what is the most fundamental problem, insufficient in-so-far as these functions of the brain are concerned. The opening of dead bodies as a means of mapping the structure and proportions of the body was seen as useful in Renaissance medicine, especially for surgery. It was the discovery by Vesalius that knowledge of the geography of the human body. required (epistemologically) a comparison to be made between the anatomy of human corpses with that of animal bodies. The vivisection of animals was important for knowledge of the lower functions of the body. including motions and sensations, but not necessary. Brain functions such as motions and sensations can also be studied on wounded40 Jan C.C. Rupp human beings. The essence of life can neither be touched by the anatomy of human corpses. nor by the vivisection of animals who miss the functions of memory, thinking and reasoning. In the seventeenth century very important experiments were carried out on living animals, such as Harvey's blood circulation experiment, De Graaf's with the working of the pancreas-gland, and Boyle's with the air-pump. Vivisection experiments were regarded to be the most important medical experiments, the dominant medical discourse was still ‘clinical’. Harvey stated his priorities very clearly in his letter to Jo. Riolan on the occasion of the publication in 1648 of Riolan’s book Encheiridium Anatomicum et Pathologicum: And indeed, the physiological consideration of the things which are according to nature is to be first undertaken by medical men: since that which is in conformity with nature is right, and serves as a rule both to itself and to that which is amiss: by the light it sheds. too, aberrations and affections against nature are defined: pathology then stands out more clearly: and from pathology the use and art of healing, as well as occasions for the discovery of many remedies are perceived. Within the context of pathology he ventures to say, that the examination ofa single body of one who has died of tabes or some other disease of long standing. or poisonous nature. is of more service to medicine than the dissection of the bodies of ten men who have been hanged.*” But in the last quarter of the seventeenth century what Foucault has called the anatomical discourse won ground. The Amsterdam anatomical school, for example, was persistent in its search for the essence of life in human corpses. Frederik Ruysch (who had an aversion to animal vivisection) came very close to Bichat’s discovery that tissue is the basic fundamental element of human life. Human Bodies In Vesalius’ work, no place can be indicated where he spoke of a shortage of human bodies (O'Malley and others only suggest this). He was dependent on ‘sponsors’, as everyone was at that time (the costs of an anatomy were concerned firstly with the transportation of the body, the sheets, the servants employed, and secondly with the payment of the anatomist). One of them was Judge Contarini*'! who even fixed the time of the execution of the criminals and the way in which they were executed according to Vesalius’ wishes. Neither did I find any indication that doctors did not have enough corpsesat their disposal in sixteenth and seventeenth century Holland. Kroon mentiones a document from 1593 in which the States of Holland and West-Friesland give the privilege to Leiden University that all dead bodies of criminals who are to be executed in the winter in theThe Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy 4l territories of the two States outside Leiden must be delivered to the professors of anatomy at Leiden.” ‘When many persons would be executed the nearest by should be delivered immediately.’ Sometimes it was a problem to find a servant to bring the corpses to Leiden, to clean the theatre etc., because they were badly paid. One can find several places in the books of the anatomists in which they that they had plenty of corpses for dissection. Thijssen concluded in 1881: "In Amsterdam one had as it seems in the seventeenth century rather less objection to the opening of corpses than in our very enlightened century’.#$ What the writings of Vesalius and also of such Dutch scientists as De Graaf, Tulp and Ruysch demonstrate is a shortage of time for anatomy because, as they put it, they were so involved in their clinical practice. Vesalius wrote in his Epistola, a letter in which he, being criticized for challenging the authority of Galen, gives an account of his work and methods, that anatomy is for the young, when one is not yet mature enough to earn money. In other words. one cannot make a living from anatomy, anatomy has not enough status for that.*+ He complained that he had to do dissections for painters and sculptors, so that he felt more miserable than the dissected person. Conflicting Interests Even Vesalius left his anatomy practice to become the emperor's doctor, just as his father and grandfather had before him. L.S. Feuer ascribes Vesalius’ withdrawal from anatomy to feelings of guilt evoked by his dissections, especially of young girls, a way of reasoning that keeps the myth about anatomy intact. O'Malley has tried to make a plausible case that Vesalius tried to leave the emperor's service secretly to pick up his anatomical practice again. This way of reasoning does not differ from that of Feuer in that the anatomist is depicted as a hero, dedicated to the very painful practice of anatomy, which appeared in the late 18th century to be the most important practice of all for humanity.** Harvey left his experimental anatomy practice to be the King’s doctor. Tulp in Amsterdam gave up his anatomy, but not his general practice, when he became burgomaster of Amsterdam. Professor Sylvius from Leiden wrote to his pupil Reinier de Graaf at Delft that he no longer had any time for anatomy because he had so many other things to do.*° All these findings indicate more conflicting (medical) interests rather than moral and religious hindrances.*” First Discussion Anatomy and anatomy theatres were very important in the Dutch Golden Age, a fact that does not seem to harmonize easily with the thesis42 Jan C.C. Rupp that religion strongly opposed anatomy. Reexamination of this question leads to the conclusion that it was not the dissection of human corpses but the vivisection of human beings that was strictly forbidden by the Christian Church and also vivisection of the brains of an animal. This kind of anatomy would destroy the ‘soul’. For Vesalius and for anatomy in general this moral law functioned as a barrier, because they were, first of all, aiming at knowledge of the functioning of the living body. Since Vesalius demonstrated that the opening of (dead) human bodies compared with those of animals is necessary to gain knowledge of the human body, and since he distinguished within the ‘princeps anima’ between the part that was related to motion and sensation (present too in brute animals) and the part related to thinking. memory and reasoning (specifically human), he could not touch what was, for him, the essence of (human) life. Motion and sensation could be studied, in spite of the prohibition of vivisection of the animal brain, in injured human beings. In the seventeenth century, physicians were also primarily interested in the functioning of the (living) body by experimenting, on the basis of heuristics derived from physics (mechanics) and chemistry. Experiments on living animals were seen as a necessary source of knowledge in this context. The clinical discourse was continued, until the second half of the seventeenth century which accords with Foucault's thesis of the antagonism between the clinical outlook and the anatomical. The causes of diseases and of death had to be looked for in the living body, death was seen as the opposite of life. Knowledge of the structure of the body was seen as very important for surgery. In the tradition of the autopsies the pathological anatomist sought the cause in terms of the locus of the illness, but the locus does not explain the disease. Ifa medical doctor had to choose, he chose the clinical practice and not the anatomical practice. Since the 1760's, however, the anatomical discourse became more and more important. The Amsterdam school of Frederick Ruysch, for example, was investigating the human corpse for its basic, essential element and came pretty close to Bichat’s findings at the end of the eighteenth century. 2 Anatomy Regulations A second source for testing Foucault's thesis is the anatomy regulations, because they reflect moral and political opinions on anatomy. Anatomy of human corpses, and vivisection experiments on animals, may have had the (relative) importance ofbeing necessary for knowledge of the structure of the human body (the situs of the organs, theThe Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy 43 proportions, etc), and useful for surgery, but why had this anatomy a public character? Why a theatre for public anatomies, which was also a museum? The two most important reasons seem to be that anatomy had to be in the public interest and needed regulation. - The Dutch city governments thought that anatomy should not stay in the hands of, in their view, injudicious and lax chirurgians guilds * and appointed graduates in medicine as the city anatomists (with the title of ‘professor of anatomy’), to which the privilege of the dissection ofa criminal corpse was granted. In this way, anatomy secured more status. Moreover, dissections in the private sphere were prohibited.*” Physicians had often called suspicion on themselves (e.g. Vesalius) to provide themselves with corpses in an illegal way, for example by stealing or having corpses stolen from cemetaries and the gallows. ‘Stealing’ cadavers and bones from churchyards and selling and buying them from churchyards was a regular activity at that time », only not done by gentlemen, but by servants or students. There was a trade in bones, skeletons, stuffed parts of bodies, etcetera, strongly stimulated by the interest in collections of natural history. The authorities tried to stop these illegal activities, which probably were the cause of many popular uprisings. Public anatomy can be regulated and the compliance with the regulations can be overseen. There are several documents which testify that the surgeons and medical doctors at first only got dead criminal bodies for anatomy if they carried out a public anatomical demonstration once a year. In the second half of the seventeenth century. anatomy became increasingly a ‘private’ (professional) affair of the medical class, which gradually had incorporated in its medical code the most relevant public regulations.®' Physicians were then provided with corpses from hospitals for their private practice and informal learned societies, as long as they complied with the regulations. The second reason for the prohibition of private anatomical practices and the promotion of public ones, was that anatomy had to be in the public interest. politically, culturally and morally. According to Govardus Bidloo’s 1690 Introduction to his Ontleding des Menschelyken Lichaams, the anatomy in Amsterdam was ‘noodzakelijk, heerlijck en vermakelijk’.’ Anatomy is ‘necessary’ because it is the foundation of entire medicine. Anatomy is the compass of medicine, for otherwise it would be very difficult to do surgery without damaging sound parts of the body or to prescribe medicines properly. Anatomy is ‘noble’ because important men in Amsterdam have always been greatly interested in anatomy and have practiced it. Quite a few city anatomists became burgomaster of the city. Anatomy is ‘delightful’ because nowhere else will one find as many curious things as in the human body, more curious than what