TY - JOUR

T1 - Medicine, connoisseurship, and the animal body

AU - Wragge-Morley, Alexander

N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, History of Science, 60 (4), 2022, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the History of Science page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/hos on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/

PY - 2022/12/1

Y1 - 2022/12/1

N2 - This essay reconsiders the links between medicine, connoisseurship, and aesthetic theory in early eighteenth-century Britain. Taking a satire on the body of the physician and collector John Woodward as its starting point, I show that medicine and connoisseurship shared a deep preoccupation with the possibility that the animal body could excessively influence the workings of the mind. Pursuing this line of argument, moreover, I will reconsider the place of mind–body dualism in eighteenth-century British medicine and aesthetics. With the exception of materialists such as the philosopher-physician Bernard Mandeville, medics and aesthetic theorists tended to identify the exercise of judgment with the operations of a disembodied mind, unsullied by the embodied mechanisms of the lower body. In practice, however, the insistence that the most refined forms of judgment depended on the presence and activity of a disembodied, immaterial soul was less meaningful than it seems. When confronted by failures of judgment, medics and connoisseurs alike sought explanations in the mechanisms of the animal body. Whether or not they believed in the immateriality of the soul, they pictured the mind as a malfunctioning animal machine, to be cured through the material agency of medical therapeutics.

AB - This essay reconsiders the links between medicine, connoisseurship, and aesthetic theory in early eighteenth-century Britain. Taking a satire on the body of the physician and collector John Woodward as its starting point, I show that medicine and connoisseurship shared a deep preoccupation with the possibility that the animal body could excessively influence the workings of the mind. Pursuing this line of argument, moreover, I will reconsider the place of mind–body dualism in eighteenth-century British medicine and aesthetics. With the exception of materialists such as the philosopher-physician Bernard Mandeville, medics and aesthetic theorists tended to identify the exercise of judgment with the operations of a disembodied mind, unsullied by the embodied mechanisms of the lower body. In practice, however, the insistence that the most refined forms of judgment depended on the presence and activity of a disembodied, immaterial soul was less meaningful than it seems. When confronted by failures of judgment, medics and connoisseurs alike sought explanations in the mechanisms of the animal body. Whether or not they believed in the immateriality of the soul, they pictured the mind as a malfunctioning animal machine, to be cured through the material agency of medical therapeutics.

KW - Connoisseurship

KW - animal studies

KW - apes

KW - dualism

KW - embodied knowledge

KW - history of medicine

KW - history of science

KW - materialism

KW - medical satire

KW - mind–body relationship

U2 - 10.1177/0073275320949001

DO - 10.1177/0073275320949001

M3 - Journal article

VL - 60

SP - 481

EP - 499

JO - History of Science

JF - History of Science

SN - 0073-2753

IS - 4

ER -