Fantastic and insightful column again! Really interesting to see that habitual criminals were often setenced to death as if they were incorrigible. Secondly, there seems to be a strange step in studying such bodies, because studying them as a way to understand normal versus criminal bodies suggests that the difference between normal and criminal people is not biological/physical -- otherwise why would studying these bodies help cure normal bodies.
Secondly, there is a really interesting discussion of Vaselius in Laqueur's Making Sex. In one of the chapters he suggested that Vesalius very much drew what he thought rather than what he saw. This chapter deals with sex and the anatomy of men/women and posited that Vesalius and his contemporaries saw -- ovaries and testes referred to by the same name and Vesalius drawings of female genitalia look like inverted penises. It is interesting to think that even for someone committed to observation assumptions about how the world is, can affect what one sees.
Thank you for your comment - learned as always! You make a really good points about the bi9ology of criminals and non-criminals being assumed to be similar. That hadn't occurred to me. In fact, I'd have included the observation if it had. I have never come across that point about Vesalius - perhaps because I haven't come across the book you mention. It is something else to add to the list. You're quite right to point out, of course, that what one expects affects what one sees rather directly. This might be a topic for yet another newsletter...
Thank you, thats much too kind. On the other hand this idea of biological similarity/difference may have also been a motivation to study the bodies of criminals even if these bodies were physiological sick too. In their minds: It is still better than nothing.
Fantastic and insightful column again! Really interesting to see that habitual criminals were often setenced to death as if they were incorrigible. Secondly, there seems to be a strange step in studying such bodies, because studying them as a way to understand normal versus criminal bodies suggests that the difference between normal and criminal people is not biological/physical -- otherwise why would studying these bodies help cure normal bodies.
Secondly, there is a really interesting discussion of Vaselius in Laqueur's Making Sex. In one of the chapters he suggested that Vesalius very much drew what he thought rather than what he saw. This chapter deals with sex and the anatomy of men/women and posited that Vesalius and his contemporaries saw -- ovaries and testes referred to by the same name and Vesalius drawings of female genitalia look like inverted penises. It is interesting to think that even for someone committed to observation assumptions about how the world is, can affect what one sees.
Thank you for your comment - learned as always! You make a really good points about the bi9ology of criminals and non-criminals being assumed to be similar. That hadn't occurred to me. In fact, I'd have included the observation if it had. I have never come across that point about Vesalius - perhaps because I haven't come across the book you mention. It is something else to add to the list. You're quite right to point out, of course, that what one expects affects what one sees rather directly. This might be a topic for yet another newsletter...
Thank you, thats much too kind. On the other hand this idea of biological similarity/difference may have also been a motivation to study the bodies of criminals even if these bodies were physiological sick too. In their minds: It is still better than nothing.
Absolutely fascinating! Thanks 🙏
Thank you, Sophie. I'm very glad you enjoyed it. I really enjoyed writing this one.