Abstract
Reviewed by: José Pardo-Tomás, IMF-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
In this book, Skaarup displays an impressive ability to bring to light historical sources of all kinds (documents from university, municipal and state archives, illustrations and engravings, printed treatises, artefacts, etc.) and use that information to build an exhaustive panorama of the culture of anatomy in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. The structure of the book makes it particularly effective at transmitting that panorama, both general and local: a chapter dedicated to each of the six cities of the Iberian Peninsula in whose universities anatomy was taught and practiced; another chapter dedicated to the practice of dissection in the royal hospital of Guadalupe; another dedicated to the teaching and practice of anatomy in Mexico. The book ends with a final chapter dedicated to the visual production of the Spanish anatomists, especially the works of Montaña (1551), Valverde (1556) and Arfe (1585).
I have two small objections, purely in terms of form, that do not detract from the work of the author. The first is that a thorough revision should have been carried out of the texts in Spanish quoted in the footnotes in order to avoid the many spelling errors (and I am not referring to the transcriptions of documents from the sixteenth century). The second is more of an opinion: instead of dedicating a separate chapter to the visual productions of the Spanish anatomists, it would have been more effective to insert them in the chapters that cover each of the urban contexts that made them possible, although it would have been necessary to dedicate a chapter to a ‘Spanish Rome’ in order to explain Valverde (although, thinking about it, this would not have been a bad idea).
A book such as this was necessary in order to gather together and disseminate the work of the Spanish anatomists, particularly in historiographic areas where Iberian anatomy has been completely absent from the hegemonic narrative. This absence has a lot to do with the capacity for isolation shown by the old Spanish historiography, turned in on itself, with two opposing sides endlessly debating the controversy of Spanish science. It is therefore unsurprising that, when an author such as Skaarup, of Scandinavian origin and educated in the European University Institute, approaches a research topic such as this, he should dedicate the first chapter of his study to trying to steal the argument of his research away from that suffocating theoretical framework. The attempt, however, cannot be considered altogether successful. Perhaps because he did not really need to begin here. Firstly, because of the risk of subordinating the wealth of well-founded new information provided by this book to the task of demolishing an historiographic image that, in reality, is already in ruins, although its ghostly presence persists in some uninformed synthesis studies. Secondly, this discussion is far removed from the interests of current historians of early modern anatomy, who have no interest in perpetuating myths such as that of the ‘Vesalian revolution’ or in continuing to make comparisons of different countries in terms of ‘steps backwards’ or ‘steps forwards’, as if the national framework were appropriate and not, as it is, anachronistic and unfocused. Skaarup is aware of all this, as is shown by his sources and his intelligent use of them in developing the book. But he has felt the ‘obligation’ to use these terms precisely because he is dealing with the ‘Spanish case’. It is not, I insist, his fault. The book merely reflects the idea that it remains necessary to treat a ‘Spanish case’ as something anomalous or, at best, something that should cease to be regarded as such.
This aside, the author has done an impeccable job of assimilating everything that has been published to date, in a dispersed manner and often locally, far from a general interpretative framework. He also contributes a considerable amount of new information, thanks to his thorough mastery of his documentary sources. This has allowed him a much more accurate reading of matters such as the chronology of the practice of dissection and the teaching of anatomy in Iberian universities (he also looks at Coimbra and Lisbon), the relationship of Andreas Vesalius with Spanish anatomists, the role of royal power in the institutionalization of university anatomy, the involvement of not only physicians but also surgeons and artists in the reception of a new way of viewing the human body.
A book like this is very welcome because it will, without a doubt, make it impossible to continue ignoring the presence of the Iberian anatomists in the dense European network of circulation of knowledge of the human body, and the practices and representations that made that circulation possible.