© 1994 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
Articles |
Political Post-mortems and Morbid Anatomy in Seventeenth-century England
* 17 Arlington Drive, Old Marston, Oxford OX3 0SH.
Michel Foucault argued that the development of morbid anatomy, which he located in late eighteenth-century France, led to a great increase in the power of doctors over patients. The use of autopsy findings to confirm the cause of death and to provide information for systematic pathology had a prior history, however. When introduced into England, in the seventeenth century, the practice was already well established in Europe, notably in connection with the embalming of the French kings. Several highly controversial autopsies, conducted on royalty and politicians, publicized the procedure and helped to make it socially acceptable. English anatomists were then able to draw on the results of autopsies conducted on their patients to correlate normal anatomy with the post-mortem signs. Most patients did not feel threatened by this procedure because it was undertaken privately and with consent, as a final act of clinical care. English physicians abandoned autopsies to the surgeons towards the end of the century in pursuit of a more genteel style of self-presentation. The connection between power and morbid anatomy seems to arise not from the practice of autopsy itself but from the impersonal authority of late eighteenth-century hospital doctors over poor patients.
Keywords: death; autopsy; anatomy; pathology; royal physicians; England; the Stuart kings
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  V. McMahon Reading the Body: Dissection and the 'Murder' of Sarah Stout, Hertfordshire, 1699 Soc Hist Med, April 1, 2006; 19(1): 19 - 35. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|