Author: jknopes

Vol. 39 Issue 1 March 2015: Medicalizing Heroin

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In addition to our From the Archive series, where we highlight past articles in the journal’s history, the CMP blog features selected previews of our latest issue. This week, we again take a sneak peek into an article from the March issue: the first installment of 2015’s Volume 39 of Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry.

Heroin: From Drug to Ambivalent Medicine

On the Introduction of Medically Prescribed Heroin and the Emergence of a New Space for Treatment

Birgitte Schepelern Johansen • Katrine Schepelern Johansen. Pages 75-91. Link to article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11013-014-9406-7

This article examines the reintroduction of heroin as a medicine, as opposed to illicit drug, in the treatment of substance abuse patients. Unlike existing research on this topic, the authors here emphasize the exchanges between the users, the staff, and the material space of the implementation of heroin: the built and organizational environments of the clinic, rather than just the actors in this space alone.

Heroin exists in a complicated place in these clinics: it is (paradoxically) utilized to minimize addiction to it. Rather than marginalizing the drug, this process of managed heroin prescription lends the drug a central place in the lives of users and staff, albeit a place that ambivalently lies between drug use as pleasure and drug injection as a form of medicalized control.

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When considering the rooms in the clinic where the staff injects heroin into clients, the authors note that the space is strictly regulated. Staff observe incoming clients, while those who carry out injections do not permit the patients from selecting where the drug is administered. Likewise, this clinical space is not used for socializing: clients don’t casually talk while waiting, and typically depart this area and linger in the facility’s more casual cafe after receiving their injection. The clinical space removes the use of heroin from the context of pleasure-seeking, and assumes control for the drug’s use. Although the substance is the same, heroin users’ experiences of the drug in recreational settings is deliberately set apart from its use in the clinic.

Yet distinguishing the clinical space where heroin is injected, while no doubt increasing medicalized control over the substance, also complicates the notion of the drug as unquestionably destructive. Clients move into a social, casual environment in the cafe after initial injection. Even the clinical space itself underscores the intimacy of intravenous drug use, as staff and clients engage one-on-one during the injections. The staff similarly struggle with the complex nature of heroin as an illegal drug, made most evident by the strict safeguarding of the location where heroin is stored.

Although the medicalization of heroin abuse may serve to diminish the criminal stigma surrounding use of the drug, medical models of treatment remain entangled in older ideas of substance illegality, criminality, and the stringent enforcement of substance abuse policies. Conversely, the clinical treatment space and its organization is arranged in such a way that muddies the boundary between pleasure and treatment. The authors thereby illustrate the complexity of moving towards a medical model of heroin treatment, and how notions of control evolve with the changing landscape of substance abuse policy.

Vol. 39 Issue 1 March 2015: Ethnography & Clinical Practice

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In addition to our From the Archive series, where we highlight past articles in the journal’s history, the CMP blog features selected previews and sneak peeks into our latest issue. This week, we gain a glimpse into an article from the March issue: the first installment of 2015’s Volume 39 of Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry.

A Model for Translating Ethnography and Theory into Culturally Constructed Clinical Practices

Bonnie Kaul Nastasi, et al. Pages 92-120. Link to article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11013-014-9404-9

In this article, Nastasi and colleagues have developed a new model for preventative care of HIV and STIs over the course of a 6-year research project in Mumbai, India. This clinical approach, called the Narrative Intervention Model (NIM), implores married men in Mumbai to construct narratives around their sexual health and related problems. With the clinician, patients then deconstruct the narrative to locate discrepancies between their accounts of sexual health and their desired health status. The last stage of the preventative approach entails clinicians coaching patients on how to minimize risk while meeting patient expectations surrounding sexual health. In this way, health counseling becomes a more dynamic process than medical history taking alone.

cropped-cards.jpgThe NIM model in this initial study was employed by both allopathic physicians and traditional Indian medical practitioners. By analyzing patients’ accounts and creating models for health behavior that minimized risks of HIV or STIs, caregivers were able to blend an anthropological and public health approach to preventative medicine. Likewise, the model drew on principles of cognitive behavioral psychology: inquiring about patients’ logic in rationalizing health choices, and intervening in this narrative to display where risks might be prevalent.

In the NIM model, the clinician’s interview with the patient takes on a semi-structured form (which the authors assert is “ethnographic” in nature.) Rather than traditional history-taking, which is an elicitation of information from the patient rather than a more fluid conversation, the NIM encourages patients to make connections between their cultural beliefs, behaviors, and their health.

Given the widespread interest in both medicine and anthropology on patient-clinician communication, this case presents an informative glance into how caregivers might draw on ethnographic practices to improve patient health. NIM offers one methodology for meaningful exchanges between clinicians and patients, and unites the aims of medicine and anthropology in illuminating culturally specific health behaviors, beliefs, and practices for the direct benefit of patients.

Book Release: Buchbinder’s “All in Your Head: Making Sense of Pediatric Pain”

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This May 2015, Mara Buchbinder’s book All in Your Head: Making Sense of Pediatric Pain will be released by the University of California Press. The book grapples with the difficulty of expressing internal states to others via language, as these inner subjective experiences are often considered impossible to actualize in words. Buchbinder strives to honor this private experience of pain while studying how language surrounding pain and pain management is relational in nature. She explores how pain is described, managed, and treated in medical settings.

Image via UC Press

Image via UC Press

The text is a product of ethnographic research in numerous pediatric units in California hospitals. Buchbinder considers the social lives of physicians, caregivers, clinicians, parents, and children, all with a stake in alleviating pain and interpreting troubling or perplexing symptoms. Rather than allowing pain to be read solely as an isolating, private matter, the author argues that the treatment of pain is a complex social phenomenon. By focusing on narratives, conversations, and metaphors used by participants to illustrate the nature of pain, Buchbinder’s account underscores the power of language to generate shared meanings for human suffering.

All in Your Head will prove of interest to linguistic and medical anthropologists alike, as well as to scholars in the medical humanities with an interest in textual and communicative analysis in clinical settings. To learn more about this upcoming book, visit the publication page at the University of California Press here: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520285224

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mara Buchbinder is Assistant Professor of Social Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she also teaches coursework in anthropology. She has previously coauthored the book Saving Babies? The Consequences of Newborn Genetic Screening.

Guest Blog: Culture, Medicine, and Neuropsychiatry

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This week, we are featuring a special guest blog post by M. Ariel Cascio, PhD. Here, she discusses neuropsychiatry in the Italian context and within the United States.

In the 21st century, anthropologists and allied scholars talk frequently of the biologization, cerebralization or neurologization of psychiatry. Many make reference to the 1990s, the “Decade of the Brain” that closed out the last century. They talk about “brain diseases” as a dominant discourse in discussions of mental illness. The 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association hosted a panel on “reflections on mind and body in the era of the ‘cerebral subject.’” In these and other ways, scholars write and talk about increasing dominance of brain discourses in discussion of psychological and psychiatric topics. This dominance has historical roots, for example in German (Kraepelinian) psychiatry, and authors in Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry and elsewhere have written about the historical context and local manifestations of this dominance of the neurological in the psy- sciences.

In this blog post I explore a situation in which neurology and psychiatry have long co-existed: the Italian field of neuropsychiatry. While the field “neuropsychiatry” is not unknown in the United States, and similar terms are used in other countries as well, I offer some comments specifically on the Italian context. The example of Italian neuropsychiatry provides one case of a particular historical relationship between neurology, psychiatry, and psychology that would be of interest to any historical or anthropological scholars of psychiatry.

The Italian medical system distinguishes between neuropsychiatry and psychiatry, neuropsichiatria infantile and psichiatria. Neuropsichiatria infantile (child neuropsychiatry), abbreviated NPI but sometimes referred to simply as neuropsichiatria (neuropsychiatry), addresses neurological, psychiatric, and developmental problems in children under age 18. Psichiatria (psychiatry) treats adults starting at age 18. As such, it is tempting to simply distinguish child and adult psychiatry. However, neuropsychiatry and psychiatry actually have distinct origins and practices. As the names imply, neuropsychiatry links neurology and psychiatry. Adult psychiatry, however, does not.

While Italian psychiatry has its roots in early 19th century organicist and biological approaches, in the 1960s a younger generation of psychiatrists, most prominently Franco Basaglia, aligned themselves with phenomenology and existential psychiatry. These psychiatrists crystallized their ideas into the ideology of Psichiatra Democratica (Democratic Psychiatry) and the initiative of “Basaglia’s Law,” the 1978 Law 180 which began Italy’s process of deinstitutionalization, generally considered to be very successful (Donnelly 1992). While childhood neuropsychiatry is indeed the counterpart to adult psychiatry, more than just the age group served differentiates these fields. If Italian psychiatry has its roots in Basaglia and the ideology of democratic psychiatry, neuropsychiatry has its roots at the turn of the 20th century, in the works of psychiatrist Sante de Sanctis, psychopedagogue Giuseppe F. Montesano, and pedagogue Maria Montessori.

In this way, neuropsychiatry’s origins bridged psychiatry and pedagogy (Bracci 2003; Migone 2014). Giovanni Bollea has been called the father of neuropsychiatry for his role in establishing the professional after World War II (Fiorani 2011; Migone 2014). Fiorani (2011) traces the use of the term neuropsychiatry (as opposed to simply child psychiatry, for example) to Bollea’s desire to honor the distinctly Italian tradition and legacy following Sante de Sanctis.

Several features distinguish psychiatry and neuropsychiatry. Migone (2014) argues that child neuropsychiatry has taken more influence from French psychoanalytic schools, whereas adult psychiatry has taken more influence from first German and then Anglo-Saxon psychiatries. Migone further explains:

Child and adolescent psychiatry in Italy is therefore characterized by a reduced use of medications (if compared to the United States), and by a diffuse use of dynamic psychotherapy, both individual and family therapy (from the mid-1970s systemic therapy spread). The attention to the family and the social environment is extremely important for understand the clinical case during the developmental years. [My translation]

Moreover, neuropsychiatry is known for being multidisciplinary and working in equipe, teams of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and so on. It incorporates psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, dynamic psychology, psychological testing, social interventions, and more (Fiorani 2011).

This extremely brief overview outlines key characteristics of Italian neuropsychiatry and the ways it is distinguished from Italian psychiatry, as well as from U.S. psychiatry. Italian neuropsychiatry provides one example of a long-standing relationship between neurology, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, and pedagogy. By drawing attention to this medical specialty and the complexities of the different fields it addresses, I hope to have piqued the interest of historical and anthropological scholars. I include English and Italian language sources for further reading below.

References and Further Reading – English

Donnelly, Michael. 1992. The Politics of Mental Health in Italy. London ; New York: Routledge.

Feinstein, Adam. 2010. A History of Autism: Conversations with the Pioneers. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Levi, Gabriel, and Paola Bernabei. 1997. Italy. In Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders. 2nd edition. Donald J. Cohen and Fred R. Volkmar, eds. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Nardocci, Franco. 2009. The Birth of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry: From Rehabilitation and Social Inclusion of the Mentally Handicapped, to the Care of Mental Health during Development. Ann Ist Super Sanità 45: 33–38.

References and Further Reading – Italian

Bracci, Silvia. 2003. Sviluppo della neuropsichiatria in Italia ed Europa. Storia delle istituzioni psichiatriche per l’infanzia. In L’Ospedale psichiatrico di Roma. Dal Manicomio Provinciale alla Chiusura. Antonio Iaria, Tommaso Losavio, and Pompeo Martelli, eds. Pp. 145–161. Bari: Dedalo.

Fiorani, Matteo. 2011. Giovanni Bollea, 1913-2011: Per Una Storia Della Neuropsichiatria Infantile in Italia. Medicina & Storia 11(21/22): 251–276.

Migone, Paolo. 2014. Storia Della Neuropsichiatria Infantile (prima Parte). Il Ruolo Terapeutico 125: 55–70.

Russo, Concetta, Michele Capararo, and Enrico Valtellina. 2014. A sé e agli altri. Storia della manicomializzazione dell’autismo e delle altre disabilità relazionali nelle cartelle cliniche di S. Servolo. 1. edizione. Milano etc.: Mimesis.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M. Ariel Cascio is an anthropologist specializing in the cultural study of science and biomedicine, psychological anthropology, and the anthropology of youth. She recently successfully defended her dissertation on autism in Italy at Case Western Reserve University. She can be reached at ariel.cascio@case.edu. Her blog, written in Italian and English, can be viewed here: https://arielcascio.wordpress.com/.

News: WHO Release on Worldwide Hearing Loss

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When medical anthropologists consider the impacts of technology on human health, we envision life-saving drugs, surgeries, or diagnostic tools to detect disease. Technology in these ways can prove instrumental– quite literally — in improving patients’ health outcomes. However, it is equally important to think about the ways in which technology can diminish health, particularly in an age where the global spread of technology deserves the attention of clinicians and anthropologists alike.

This is the nature of the concern posed by the latest World Health Organization (WHO) report, released on February 27th 2015. After studying noise exposure in middle and high income countries and among participants ages 14-35, WHO officials stated that an estimated 1.1 billion people are at risk for hearing loss due to “recreational noise.” This includes music piped through headphones and noise experienced at entertainment venues. Exposure to high decibels of sound is not itself harmful: for instance, hearing a heavy pot fall from the counter and crash onto the floor would not cause hearing damager. Rather, the extended length of exposure to such loud noises is what proves detrimental. The WHO defines dangerous levels of noise exposure as 85 decibels for eight hours or 100 decibels for 15 minutes. The report notes that a rock concert that lasts for two hours may cause temporary hearing loss or lead to other symptoms such as a ringing sensation in the ears, and regular extended exposure may lead to more permanent damage.

The WHO flag, via Wikimedia Commons

The WHO flag, via Wikimedia Commons

What does the WHO recommend to address this global health concern? The report singles out teenagers and implores them to take noise management into their own hands: purchasing noise-canceling headphones, taking “sound breaks” if extended exposure to loud sounds is unavoidable, or wearing ear plugs to loud music venues. This places the responsibility to manage noise exposure on young people rather than on their families and caregivers. Likewise, the report suggests that patrons of entertainment venues like clubs and bars that feature loud music and sounds should limit their time spent in such environments. There are no extensive recommendations listed in the report for those who work in loud venues, other than limiting shifts to eight hours to shorten exposure.

From a medical anthropological standpoint, many of the factors in sound environments are tangled with social life. For instance, in many developed countries, concerts are an important social gathering place for young people. Teens may not avoid these events, but if they follow the WHO recommendations and wear earplugs to the venue, they may be ostracized by their peers for looking out of place. Likewise, neighborhood bars and clubs are important hubs of activity for locals, and avoiding them may come at the cost of social isolation. As technologies spread both to developing and developed countries, the ways that people integrate audio technologies, new entertainment venues, and popular music into their lives is worth considering given the impacts of these tools, sounds, and social spaces on hearing health.

To read the WHO’s news release, click here: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/ear-care/en/

March 2015: Preview of Books Received

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This week, we are featuring previews of five books received for review at Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Be sure to check out more articles, reviews, commentaries, and case studies published in the first issue of volume 39 (2015) here: http://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/11013

via Westview Press

via Westview Press

Language, Culture, and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology

Zdenek Salzmann, James Stanlaw, and Nobuko Adachi, eds.

This textbook was first published in 1993, and this is the book’s sixth edition. The new incarnation of Language, Culture, and Society features has been revised and expanded with further explanation of the sociocultural context of language. It is also complete with class exercises, discussion questions, and other student resources. The book pays special attention to multilingual and transnational linguistic anthropology.

More details from Westview Press here: http://westviewpress.com/books/language-culture-and-society/

Via UC Press

Via UC Press

Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam

Tine M. Gammeltoft

This ethnographic account explores the lives of pregnant women in Hanoi, Vietnam whose fetuses were deemed biologically abnormal after ultrasound examinations. Gammeltoft considers the moral dilemmas these women face against the backdrop of their everyday lives and the roles of their family members in reproductive decision-making.

More details from UC Press here: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520278431

Via UC Press

Via UC Press

Can’t Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility

Susan Starr Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk

This ethnographic work traces Boston women’s experiences of sexual abuse, violence, inadequate social and therapeutic programs, and the impacts of local and federal policies on incarceration and criminal punishment. The authors consider how these women’s struggles are cast aside as the consequences of “bad choices” and “personal flaws,” and how marginalized women make their way in this “unforgiving world.”

More details from UC Press here: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520282797

Via Duke UP

Via Duke UP

Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion

Lucinda Ramberg

Ramberg’s account addresses a unique cultural tradition in South India, where girls and sometimes boys are married to a goddess. They have sex with partner outside of traditional marriage and conduct holy rites outside of the goddess’ temple, and complicate the boundaries between what is male and female. The author argues that goddess marriages challenge existing notions of gender, marriage, and religious practice.

More details from Duke UP here: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Given-to-the-Goddess/index-viewby=subject&categoryid=27&sort=newest.html

Via Johns Hopkins UP

Via Johns Hopkins UP

Generic: The Unbranding of Modern Medicine

Jeremy Greene

This text is a social, political, and cultural history of the rise in generic pharmaceuticals. It tracks the development of modern generic drugs from early 20th century hacks who counterfeited popular medications through the growth in powerful corporations who first produced un-branded drugs. Greene describes generic drugs as a seminal movement towards more equitable, affordable medical care by giving patients quality medicines at a reduced price.

More details from Johns Hopkins UP here: https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/generic

Upcoming Conferences in Social Studies of Science/Medicine: Fall 2015

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If you have an event to add to this list, please contact Julia Balacko at jcb193@case.edu with the name of the event/conference, date(s), location, and a link to the event page or a brief description. This list is for conference in the Fall of 2015 (August-December.) All conferences/events are organized chronologically by date.

 Seventh International Conference on Science in Society: “Educating Science”

October 1-2 2015 – Chicago, Illinois

http://science-society.com/the-conference/call-for-papers

A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersection of Culture, Brain, & Behavior Conference

October 23-24 2015 – Los Angeles, California

http://www.thefprconference2015.org/

Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting

November 11-14 2015 – Denver, Colorado

http://www.4sonline.org/meeting

American Anthropological Association 2015 Annual Meeting: “Familiar/Strange”

November 18-22 2015 – Denver, Colorado

http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/

Logo via AAA website

Logo via AAA website

History of Science Society Annual Meeting

November 19-22 – San Francisco, California

http://hssonline.org/meetings/annual-meeting-archive/

From the Archive: AMC’s Breaking Bad, Empowerment, and Terminal Illness

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In the “From the Archive” series, we highlight articles published throughout the journal’s history. We look forward to sharing with our readers these samples of the innovative research that CMP has published on the cultural life of medicine across the globe.

In “From the Archive,” we generally highlight older publications from the journal and discuss their importance for medical anthropology and cultural studies of medicine today. This week, we are taking a turn to revisit a newer piece from 2013 that has been one of CMP’s most popular articles: Mark A. Lewis’ “From Victim to Victor: ‘Breaking Bad’ and the Dark Potential of the Terminally Empowered.”

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Lewis, an oncologist, opens by describing a recent shift in the treatment of cancer. With new and experimental treatments growing in number, patients are encouraged to feel hopeful about therapy for their cancer, rather than defeated in the face of a potentially terminal condition. These new scientific innovations in treatment, therefore, are altering the rhetorics surrounding cancer diagnoses. Cancer is something to be overcome, or even battled. In the age of the “Live Strong” campaign, and the casting of cancer patients into fighters, new notions of what it means to endure this illness are developing.

The key to AMC’s Breaking Bad, Lewis argues, is that the creators seize upon this new model of the cancer patient and then betray the audience’s expectations that his battle against illness is a “noble” one. Rather than having a diagnosis opening a realm to hope, it lends Walter White the potential to take risks he would not have taken in good health. Imminent death “emboldens” Walter, yet this newfound audacity is channeled towards selfish, perhaps prideful, and certainly criminal ends.

Lewis notes that these behavioral, psychological shifts in cancer patients come under the purview of a new field deemed psycho-oncology. This budding discipline addresses the mental wellness and conditions of cancer patients, whose diagnosis carries somatic as well as psychological effects. As the article suggests, stress for cancer patients extends beyond the worries they have about the severity of their illness: it includes anxiety about the financial and personal costs of the treatment needed to ‘battle off’ the disease. For White, this entails not only having the means to treat his illness and support his family, but also to be self-sustaining, hence why he turns down assistance from wealthy benefactors and instead makes and sells crystal meth.

Walter White therefore follows in the steps of a cancer patient whose diagnosis opens a realm of possibilities and encourages him to take risks in fighting off his condition. However, this transformation alters what victory means for Walter. As he descends deeper into the meth business, the terms of victory are no longer noble. Walter murders his competitors, and after the publication of Lewis’ article, declares at the end of the series that his drug-dealing empire is what gives him life. His pride is in his business, not in overcoming his cancer. Walter’s potential is unlocked by the cancer, yet he subverts the narrative of a “noble” patient who survives his dire diagnosis. His cancer has merely positioned him to accomplish what he would have not otherwise set out to do.

Lewis’ article demonstrates the centrality of illness narratives and new models of illness experience to popular media. His article draws on medical science, popular health campaigns, and on modern-day encounters with terminal illness to inform viewers’ expectations of what path patients might, and should, follow.

To access the article and read an abstract, click here:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11013-013-9341-z

“Making” Anatomical Bodies: T. Kenny Fountain’s Rhetoric in the Flesh

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Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the book launch for T. Kenny Fountain’s Rhetoric in the Flesh: Trained Vision, Technical Expertise, and the Gross Anatomy Lab. At the event, Fountain discussed some of the key arguments from the book, and shared anecdotes from his participant observation in the human gross anatomy lab.

Book cover via ATTW

Book cover via ATTW

Fountain’s text is an ethnographic account penned from the perspective of a rhetorician of science communication. His focus on language offers a lens into anatomical learning and clinical training that is at once pointed and engrossing. Through his account, Fountain reveals the underlying relationships and tensions between students of anatomy and the bodies they dissect.

As I learned from the book launch talk and from an initial reading of the text, one term that Fountain’s participants in the laboratory frequently returned to was “making.” This word appears counterintuitive, given that dissection entails acts that are more closely associated with destruction than creation: scraping fat from tissues, disarticulating bones, removing organs to see structures beneath of them. However, “making” meant something quite particular to those who carried out dissections.

Students, instructors, and teaching assistants in the cadaver laboratories employed “making” to describe cutting and preparing the corpse in ways that would mimic the beautifully colored, flawlessly sketched anatomical drawings in their medical atlases. To dissect a body in a careful fashion that would reveal biological structures as cleanly and as clearly as the textbooks was to “make” the body, both into a mimicry of the visuals in the textbooks, and into a body that was representative of what the books deemed anatomical truth. Some students alternatively deemed this process “Netterizing,” or rendering their cadaver’s anatomy to appear as manifestly as the eminent anatomical artist and physician Frank Netter did in his illustrations.

Yet bodies can be “made” by more than the students and faculty alone. Fountain’s text also argues that bodies can make themselves. In one case, a woman who donated her body to science accompanied her anatomical gift with a letter. The letter contained details of the domestic abuse she suffered, as she explained the scars medical students would discover on her skin when they began to dissect her. The woman cast her body in a context that the students who received her body, and read her correspondence, could not ignore when considering the conditions under which that body lived and died. This woman “made” her body a representation of its life, its embodied struggles, and its significance as a precious gift to the students who received it.

Cadavers can also “make” themselves in death. One cadaver in the laboratory Fountain observed at had late-stage cancer that had not been reported on her medical records before she was embalmed for dissection. The cancerous tissue was stiff and impossible to cut through. It obscured structures, encased organs, and halted the dissection. In this instance, the cadaver makes itself both anomalous– by not representing “true” anatomical structures like the textbooks– and simultaneously representative of the reality of disease, which medical students will confront as future physicians.

For linguistic and medical anthropologists alike, as well as all humanistic scholars of medicine, Fountain’s book presents fresh analysis on an age-old tradition of medical learning: anatomical dissection. By attending closely to the language used to describe bodies, the language used by donors to describe their own bodies, and to the visual displays that mediate experience in anatomical learning, Fountain provides an innovative account that blends science and technology studies, visual studies, and rhetorical research.

You can learn more about and purchase Rhetoric in the Flesh here:

http://www.attw.org/publications/book-series/rhetoric-in-the-flesh

A similar version of this post appears at the Dittrick Museum blog, which you may find here:

http://dittrickmuseumblog.com/

Book Release: Haeckel’s Embryos by Nick Hopwood

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Debuting May 2015 from the University of Chicago Press is Nick Hopwood’s Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud. The book describes the lasting cultural impact of 19th-century illustrations that demonstrate the identical appearance of human and other vertebrate embryos in the earliest stages of gestation, only later morphing into their adult-like forms. These drawings, produced by Darwinist Ernst Haeckel in 1868, caused an uproar in the scientific community at the time as well as in the 1990s, when biologists and creationists alike argued against their accuracy and inclusion into scientific textbooks.

Image courtesy University of Chicago Press

Image courtesy University of Chicago Press

Hopwood traces the heated history of Haeckel’s drawings from their initial publication in the 19th century through their controversial presence in the current age. In addition to considering the impact of these images on developing understandings of biology, Haeckel simultaneously draws attention to the continued power of these images in contemporary discourse. The book will prove of interest to scholars of medicine who are curious about how popular as well as scientific knowledge of the human body is shaped by visual media, as well as how scientific information is culturally and historically situated.

Nick Hopwood is Reader in History of Science and Medicine and the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Cambridge’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

To learn more about the book, check out its feature page at UCP here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo18785800.html