Beginning with the Ancient Greeks, there was something beautiful humans saw in their own bodies—was it vanity? Curiosity? Or a desire to understand the self? Certainly, the Greeks crafted sculptures celebrating musculature and athleticism, well reflected in a copy of the Diskobolos, or Discus Thrower, in front of Hemenway Gym. Centuries have passed, and the body has been minimalized and abstracted to an almost unrecognizable Reclining Figure, a Henry Moore work we may often pass with little regard on our way to Lamont. Even so, we still find art capturing an aesthetic quality of the human form—pieces reflecting an external beauty, as well as parallel works depicting components that are less conventionally beautiful.
Granted, not all pre-meds may find themselves drawn to Greek statues or Medieval prints, let alone read an article mentioning art. But for most pre-meds, there’s something about the human body we find appealing as a subject of study. Perhaps it’s that same desire to understand the human self, expressed by the Ancients. We share a similar fascination with the unique forms and lines of the body…and while the simple mention of “dissection” may conjure images of gore, premeds gravitate towards it. Traditionally less-than gorgeous parts of the body provide an odd sense of fascination—while tumors and lesions are far from visually-appealing, premeds tend to derive an attachment to the grotesque. In this respect, we are much like the artists who immortalized both the traditional and bizarre aspects of the beautiful.
Wandering through the fourth floor of the Sackler, I found myself drawn to a curious set of prints. The subject wasn’t particularly novel—just the way the images were presented. Most depictions of brain dissections take care to focus simply on the skull and the brain, but these prints began with an image of the cadaver’s head, before proceeding to peel away at the skin, remove the bone, the jaw, and finally excise the brain. Considering the times (particularly the Catholic Church’s banning of human dissections as desecration), the images were fascinating with the striking blend of external flesh and internal organs, flaps of dissected skin loosely hanging, falling dangerously near the dead man’s eyes. In contrast, our contemporary drawings seem rather mild, rather detached from the actual humanity to the point of treating the brain as an entity of its own. Perhaps the print reminds us to consider the whole, rather than just the part. Medicine deals with the whole patient, rather than a single aspect.
Granted, not all pre-meds may find themselves gravitating towards the Sackler Museum, and even if they do, perhaps not the relatively two-dimensional, black and white works on the fourth floor. Yet beyond simple appreciation, art reflects practices in medicine. In hoping to be future physicians, we take great pride in the powers of observation—noticing symptoms of illness in a patient, finding pathological irregularities, and matching up these notes to the patient as a whole. In effect, we base our knowledge on what we see—a sort of realism. In this regard, the artist-scholars of the past were not much different.
While they are housed in an institution for art, they are much more than just historical bits of ink on parchment. From the prints of dissections to an interactive book bringing to life the body systems on a page, these etchings and engravings form the basis of modern anatomy; they show the very nature of detailed observation with a bit of educated speculation! Certainly, there are prints of skeletons with far too many bones and an engraving of a Hercules with twice as many muscles. Yet, even these “flawed” works give a record of the scientific advances made, immortalized by printers and scholars.
