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Acknowledgements
Our attitudes towards the human body are so confused and conflicted that on many occasions during the research for this book I found my access barred to the things that I felt I needed to see and experience – barred ostensibly by regulation, but in fact by timid gatekeepers who did not want the trouble of opening their resources to an outsider’s gaze. I am all the more grateful, then, to those few who were prepared, in the face of these regrettable restrictions, to grant me a privileged view into what is in fact our own corporeal world. I am grateful above all to Sarah Simblet of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, who allowed me to join her classes in drawing from anatomy, and to John Morris, the professor of human anatomy at the University of Oxford, in whose department this uniquely informative activity takes place.
Ken Arnold provided the introduction to Sarah without which this book would have had nowhere to begin. Once again I am greatly indebted to him and his colleagues at the Wellcome Collection, James Peto, Lisa Jamieson, Rosie Tooby and Elayne Hodgson, for their assistance and expertise. In 2009, they were kind enough to invite me to curate an exhibition called ‘Identity: Eight Rooms, Nine Lives’. I have borrowed greedily from some of the lives that we presented there. I am immensely grateful to April Ashley, who allowed us to tell the remarkable story of her gender reassignment for that exhibition, which I have retold in brief here. I am grateful, also, to Ruth Garde, who delved into the phrenological literature and came up with many riches, a few of which I also draw upon, and to the various neuroscientists whose fMRI images of the brain featured in that exhibition. A small part of my chapter dealing with the brain is adapted from an essay I wrote for the catalogue of that exhibition, Identity and Identification (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2009).
This is the first book that I have written about the life sciences, and one of the chief pleasures associated with it has been my discovery of the Wellcome Library. Here I was imaginatively guided by William Schupbach, Simon Chaplin, Ross Macfarlane, Christopher Hilton and Lesley Hall. Diana Wood at the library of the Fitzwilliam Museum and the staff of the Cambridge University Library also provided assistance.
I would also like to thank Fay Bound Alberti, Sam Alberti and his colleagues Carina Phillips, Tony Lander and Martyn Cooke at the Royal College of Surgeons, Santiago Alvarez, Vittorio and Enrica Norzi, Andrea Sella, Erik Spiekermann, Luba Vikhanski, Barbora Koláčková and Jana Vokacova, who responded enthusiastically to my request for body idioms in languages other than English, Derek Batty, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Barry Bogin, Serena Box, Vicki Bruce, Edwin Buijsen at the Mauritshuis, Deborah Bull and Molly Rosenberg at the Royal Opera House, Chris Burgoyne, Gemma Calvert, Emily Campbell, Emma Chambers, Alex Clarke, Jody Cundy, Chris Furber and Iga Kowalska-Owen of the British Paralympic cycling team, Andrew Douds, Alan Eaton, William Edwards at the Gordon Museum, Pascal Ennaert at the Groeninge Museum, Mattie Faint, Chris Frith, David Gault, Roderick Gordon, Michael John Gorman and Brigid Lanigan at the Science Gallery, Dublin, Daniel Green, Gary Green and Sam Johnson at the York Neuroimaging Centre, Aubrey de Grey, Annabel Huxley, Karen Ingham, Jim Kennedy, Tobie Kerridge, Vivienne Lo, Natasha McEnroe, James Neuberger, Helen O’Connell, Deborah Padfield, James Partridge, David Perrett, Wolfgang Pirsig, Emma Redding and her colleagues Mary Ann Hushlak, Sarah Chin and Luke Pell at the Laban Centre, Keith Roberts, Laura Bowater, Hope Gangata and David Heylings at the University of East Anglia, Nichola Rumsey, Volker Scheid, Don Shelton, Jim Smith, Charles Spence, Lindsay and Justin Stead, Viren Swami, Julian Vincent, Crawford White, Fiona Wollocombe, Duncan X and Blue at Into You. I confess to stealing the idea for the illustration on the dedication page from Ruth Richardson.
I happily thank my agent Antony Topping, my editor Will Hammond, copy editor David Watson and my wife Moira and son Sam, who have once again put up with me as I battled to learn something of a topic about which, like most of us, I knew and still know so little.
Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Norfolk, July 2012
Index
Entries correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Page references in italic indicate illustrations.
Achilles 204
Achilles heel 60
Achilles tendon 58
Adam (biblical) 55, 90, 156, 203, 236
Adam (Visible Human Project) 36
adrenaline 152
Adriaenszoon, Adriaen 4–6, 189–90
ageing theory 257
Alberti, Fay Bound 131, 138
Alberti, Leon Battista 24
Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women 95
amino acids 201
Amis, Martin: London Fields 101
Amish 133
Amsterdam 1, 4, 7
analytical photography 97
anatomy drawing 1–15
anatomy theatres 6–7
Anaxagoras 190
Andersen, Hans Christian: ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ 236
angels 248–9, 250
animal ‘donors’ 252–3
anorexia 185
anti-Semitism 90
Anything Left-Handed 199
Apelles 226
Aphrodite 206, 210
appendicitis 234–5
aqueous humour 169–70
arabesque 222
Arconville, Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Thiroux d’ 81
Arens, William 182
Aristophanes: The Clouds 192
Aristotle xvii, 73, 128, 141, 190, 196
Armour, Andrew 131
Armstrong, Neil, footprint on the moon 216
Artemis 243
arteries 21, 69, 71, 73, 129, 166
Arts and Crafts movement 133
Ashley, April 207–9
asymmetry 100, 197–8, 199–202, 238
Atala, Anthony 139–40
Aubrey, John 73, 129
Auschwitz experiments 77
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice 171
Avicenna 73, 119
baboon 252, 253
Bach-y-Rita, Paul 174
ballet 220–23
Barberino, Francesco da: I Documenti d’Amore 132
Barbie (doll) 227
Barcan, Ruth: Nudity 220, 236
Bardot, Brigitte 94
Barnard, Christiaan 137
Barnes, Julian: Flaubert’s Parrot 171
Barthes, Roland 207
Bartlem, Edwina 163
Batty, Derek 233
Baudelaire, Charles 176
Beaurieux, Gabriel 85
beauty 23–4, 45, 75
of the face 99–102
Galton and 96–9, 102–3
and human judgement 100
and symmetry 24, 100, 102
Beauvoir, Simone de 94
Benson, Philip 102
Bernier, François 89–90
Bertillon, Alphonse 31, 32, 170
Bertoletti, Patrick 186
Beuys, Joseph 47
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Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body Page 32