Awards

• Winner of <PrizeName>Winner, 2009 William Welch Medal given by the American Association for the History of Medicine.</PrizeName> 2009
• Winner of American Association for the History of Medicine William H. Welch Medal 2009.
• Winner of Winner, 2009 William Welch Medal given by the American Association for the History of Medicine. 2009
• Winner of Winner, 2009 William Welch Medal given by the American Association for the History of Medicine.</PrizeName> 2009

Overview

Women's bodies and the study of anatomy in Italy between the late thirteenth and the mid-sixteenth centuries.Toward the end of the Middle Ages, medical writers and philosophers began to devote increasing attention to what they called ""women's secrets,"" by which they meant female sexuality and generation. At the same time, Italian physicians and surgeons began to open human bodies in order to study their functions and the illnesses that afflicted them, culminating in the great illustrated anatomical treatise of Andreas Vesalius in 1543. Katharine Park traces these two closely related developments through a series of case studies of women whose bodies were dissected after their deaths: an abbess, a lactating virgin, several patrician wives and mothers, and an executed criminal. Drawing on a variety of texts and images, she explores the history of women's bodies in Italy between the late thirteenth and the mid-sixteenth centuries in the context of family identity, religious observance, and women's health care. Secrets Of Women explodes the myth that medieval religious prohibitions hindered the practice of human dissection in medieval and Renaissance Italy, arguing that female bodies, real and imagined, played a central role in the history of anatomy during that time. The opened corpses of holy women revealed sacred objects, while the opened corpses of wives and mothers yielded crucial information about where babies came from and about the forces that shaped their vulnerable flesh. In the process, what male writers knew as the ""secrets of women"" came to symbolize the most difficult challenges posed by human bodies-challenges that dissection promised to overcome. Park's study of women's bodies and men's attempts to know them-and through these efforts to know their own-demonstrates the centrality of gender to the development of early modern anatomy.

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9781890951689

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Park's meticulously documented book is medical historiography at its best.... [Park] has shed light on a notion-'the secrets of women'-that should have long ago been recognized as deserving far more attention than has been paid to it. -- Sherwin B. Nuland * The New Republic *

Park's meticulously documented book is medical historiography at its best... She has shed light on a notion--'the secrets of women'--that should have long ago been recognized as deserving far more attention than has been paid to it. -- Sherwin B. Nubland, The New Republic She relates a fascinating history of women on the dissection table... Park's book will undoubtedly prove to be an important contribution to the history of anatomy. For the first time it extensively discusses the history of anatomy from the viewpoint of the corpse and, because of its particular focus on women's bodies, it will radically change the way we think about the (male) history of the anatomized body. As such, the book is a 'must read' for anyone working on the history of pre-modern medicine. But because of its lucid style and fascinating argument, it is also surprisingly accessible, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of anatomy. -- Nature Park's meticulously documented book is medical historiography at its best... [Park] has shed light on a notion--'the secrets of women'--that should have long ago been recognized as deserving far more attention than has been paid to it. --Sherwin B. Nuland, The New Republic Park's book will undoubtedly prove to be an important contribution to the history of anatomy. For the first time, it extensively discusses the history of anatomy from the viewpoint of the corpse and, because of its particular focus on women's bodies, it will radically change the way we think about the (male) history of the anatomized body. --Nature

Author Information

Katharine Park's book Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (Zone Books, 1998), coauthored with Lorraine Daston, won the Pfizer Prize for the best book in the history of science. She is Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.

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