Abstract
In the conclusion, Claes returns to her main point, namely that anatomists began to treat the body as a subject rather than an object. Carefully comparing her own research on Belgium with other national and regional cases, she argues that the decades around 1900 were a pivotal moment in the history of anatomy. Cultural, religious and personal sensibilities began to affect the treatment of the corpse in anatomy from acquisition to disposal: anatomical donation gradually replaced the involuntary dissection of the poor, the inviolability of the corpse became more important during autopsies and anatomical remains no longer received an anonymous inhumation, but an individual grave.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Samuel J.M.M. Alberti, Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 71.
- 2.
Ibid., 72.
- 3.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception, trans. A.M. Sheridan (New York: Routledge, 1973), 124–48; Nicholas D. Jewson, ‘The Disappearance of the Sick-Man from Medical Cosmology, 1770–1870’, Sociology 10, no. 2 (1976): 225–44.
- 4.
Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, 2nd ed. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 30–51.
- 5.
Quotes from: Léon Marcq, Essai sur l’histoire de la médecine belge contemporaine (Brussels: Manceaux, 1866), 130–3.
- 6.
Helen Lambert and Maryon McDonald, ‘Introduction’, in Social Bodies, eds. Helen Lambert and Maryon McDonald (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2011), 1–15.
- 7.
Alberti, Morbid Curiosities, 164.
- 8.
Tatjana Buklijas, ‘Cultures of Death and Politics of Corpse Supply: Anatomy in Vienna, 1848–1914’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 3 (2008): 570–607.
- 9.
Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, eds., Culture Wars: Secular–Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- 10.
Alfons Labisch, ‘From Traditional Individualism to Collective Professionalism: State, Patient, Compulsory Health Insurance and the Panel Doctor Question in Germany 1883–1931’, in Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany, eds. Manberg Berg and Geoffrey Cocks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 18–34; Keir Waddington, ‘Unsuitable Cases: The Debate over Outpatient Admissions, the Medical Profession and Late-Victorian London Hospitals’, Medical History 42, no. 1 (1998): 26–46.
- 11.
Christian Bonah, Histoire de l’expérimentation humaine en France (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007), 114–25; Barbara Elkeles, ‘The German Debate on Human Experimentation between 1880–1914’, in Twentieth Century Ethics of Human Subject Research, eds. Volker Roelcke and Giovanni Maio (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004), 18–33; Andreas Holger Maehle, Doctors, Honour and the Law. Medical Ethics in Imperial Germany (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 69–94; Ruth R. Faden and Tom L. Beauchamp, A History and Theory of Informed Consent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 114–50.
- 12.
Most recently: Thomas W. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
- 13.
Elizabeth T. Hurren, ‘World Without Welfare. Pauper Perspectives on Medical Care under the Late Victorian Poor Law 1870–1900’, Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws, eds. Peter Jones and Steven King (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), 292–320.
- 14.
Karin Stukenbrock, ‘Der zerstückte Cörper’: Zur Sozialgeschichte der anatomischen Sektionen in der frühen Neuzeit 1650–1800 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001) and Buklijas, ‘Cultures of Death’, 570–607.
- 15.
Fiona Hutton, The Study of Anatomy in Britain, 1700–1900 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013), 12.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Claes, T. (2019). Conclusion. In: Corpses in Belgian Anatomy, 1860–1914. Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20115-9_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20115-9_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-20114-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-20115-9
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)