Abstract
William Hunter's anatomical inquiry employed all of his senses, but how did his personal experiences with the cadaver become generalized scientific knowledge teachable to students and understandable by fellow practitioners? Moving beyond a historiographical focus on Hunter's images and extending Lorraine Daston's (2008) concept of an 'ontology of scientific observation' to include non-visual senses, I argue that Hunter's work aimed to create a stabilized object of the cadaver that he and his students could perceive in common. Crucial to this stabilization was the sense of touch and its interaction with other senses, creating intersensory knowledge of the cadaver. Through a close reading of his neglected posthumous publication An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (1794), I demonstrate that Hunter wrote extensively about touch and other sensory experiences, using comparative metaphors and other linguistic strategies to engender clear ideas of the cadaver in the mind of the reader. That these ideas could be consistent between practitioners was guaranteed by God, but required practitioners to appropriately reflect on their sensory experiences with cadavers. Hunter's experimental practice encompassed both simple and complex methods, all aimed at increasing the range of sensorial experiences he had with the gravid uterus. His preservations of these experiences in text, image and preparation could then be used to support further anatomical investigations.
Highlights
Through a close reading of his neglected posthumous publication An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (1794), I demonstrate that Hunter wrote extensively about touch and other sensory experiences, using comparative metaphors and other linguistic strategies to engender clear ideas of the cadaver in the mind of the reader
That these ideas could be consistent between practitioners was guaranteed by God, but required practitioners to appropriately reflect on their sensory experiences with cadavers
In order to productively imagine Hunter’s embodied processes of investigating the gravid uterus in as much detail as possible, I combine analysis of the artefacts of Hunter’s work with his writings on it, primarily his neglected, posthumously published work An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (1794). Planned to complement his famous 1774 publication, An Anatomical Description was published by his nephew Matthew Baillie from an incomplete manuscript on the gravid uterus that Hunter left at his death
Summary
As his museum collection attests, Hunter took every opportunity he could to examine pregnancy in all its stages. He presented his first paper, ‘Of the structure and diseases of articulating cartilages’, to the Royal Society in June 1743, and appears to have been working to prepare anatomical materials for use in teaching.[27]. The theological reasoning was the same: experiencing the variety of interesting objects would engender pleasure, consistent across anatomists, which would work to fix that experience in the student’s mind
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
