Learning to Dissect. The Technologies of Touch in the Renaissance

The aim of this paper is to examine the part played by the sense of touch in anatomical practices and discourses in Renaissance Italy. As dissections became widespread in the sixteenth century, a sensory approach to the inside of the dead body (anatomia sensibilis), through the anatomist’s eye and touch, was thought to be the surest way of uncovering truths about the living body. Carlino, Kusukawa, Mandressi, Park, and Sawday have convincingly emphasized the importance of sight and visual experience in the production and communication of anatomical knowledge, through the emergence of an “autoptic vision” (Sawday) and more broadly of a new “visual argument” (Kusukawa) for the early modern scientific study of Nature. Yet the practice of anatomy engages haptic as much as visual experience: when dissecting, the anatomist cuts through the skin and touches the inside of the dead body, with his scalpel and his hands, in order to enhance his knowledge of the living body. Manual skills thus became a source of insight as they helped to unveil the real state of the body’s inside. Many medical students were therefore eager not only to attend but also to perform dissections, in order to get a better grasp of the functioning of the human body.

Using records from anatomical demonstrations and notes from medical students, this paper seeks to explore the technologies of touch that were displayed when medical students were learning to dissect. What was the part played by the sense of touch in educational practices, as well as in the production and communication of anatomical knowledge? How did the students cope with the disgust which would arise from the tactile contact with blood and other bodily fluids? How was the dissecting hand of the anatomist presented by students in their descriptions of anatomical lessons? What was the importance of the practitioner’s touch in the process of reading the body’s inner reality? Was the sense of touch used as a rhetorical strategy to express authority and claim expertise? In a word: did Vesalian anatomy and the new anatomy theatre involve a new relationship with touch (as well as observation, as has been argued)? Did a new ‘tactile argument’ also arise in this context?