̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - body

Blood and bodies: the messy meanings of a life-giving substance

amb206 — Thu, 03 May 2018 12:00:00 +0000

What is blood? Today we understand this precious fluid as essential to life. In medieval and early modern Europe, definitions of blood were almost too numerous to locate. Blood was simultaneously the red fluid in human veins, a humour governing temperament, a waste product, a cause of corruption, a source of life and a medical cure.

In 1628, William Harvey, physician to James I and alumnus of Gonville & Caius College, made a discovery that changed the course of medicine and science. As the result of careful observation, he deduced that blood circulated around the body. Harvey’s discovery not only changed the way blood was thought to relate to the heart but revolutionised early science by demanding that human physiology be examined through empirical observation rather than philosophical discourse.

This turning point, and its profound repercussions for ideas about blood, is one of many strands explored in Blood Matters: Studies of European Literature and Thought,. A collection of essays, edited by Bonnie Lander Johnson (English Faculty, Cambridge ̽��ֱ��) and Eleanor Decamp, it examines blood from a variety of literary, historical and philosophical perspectives.

“ ̽��ֱ��strength of the collection is that, in a series of themed headings, it brings together scholarship on blood to bridge the conventional boundaries between disciplines,” says Lander Johnson. “ ̽��ֱ��volume includes historical perspectives on practical uses of blood such as phlebotomy, butchery, alchemy and birth. Through literary approaches, it also examines metaphoric understandings of blood as wine, social class, sexual identity, family, and the self.”

Contributors include several Cambridge academics. Hester Lees-Jeffries (English Faculty) writes about bloodstains in Shakespeare (most notable, of course, in Macbeth) and early modern textile culture. Heather Webb (Modern and Medieval Languages) looks at medieval understandings of blood as a spirit that existed outside the body, binding people and communities together. Joe Moshenska (English Faculty) examines the classical literary trope of trees that bleed when their branches are broken.

“ ̽��ֱ��idea for the book came from my previous work on chastity. I was struck that early modern writing about the body is all about fluids, especially blood. Blood was perceived as the vehicle for humours, the essence of being and the spirit – and something that could flow between people,” says Lander Johnson.

“I became fascinated by the fact that we use this word all the time but we have no real sense of what we mean. Our predecessors used it even more frequently and yet there was no scholarship that could help me to begin to understand how many things blood meant for them. A conference at Oxford in 2014 brought together a group of people working in related fields. ̽��ֱ��book reflects the excitement of those three days.”

Definitions of blood in Western European medical writing during the period covered by the book are changeable and conflicting. “ ̽��ֱ��period’s many figurative uses of ‘blood’ are even more difficult to pin down. ̽��ֱ��term appeared in almost every sphere of life and thought and ran through discourses as significant as divine right theory, doctrinal and liturgical controversy, political reform, and family and institutional organisation,” says Lander Johnson.

“Blood, of course, was at the centre of the religious schism that split 16th-century society. ̽��ֱ��doctrinal dispute over transubstantiation caused ongoing disagreements over the degree to which the bread and wine taken during Mass were materially altered into the body and blood of Christ or merely symbolic.”

̽��ֱ��role of blood in sex and reproduction meant that it was routinely described as a force capable of both generation and corruption. Menstrual blood is a case in point. Menstruation was seen as a vital and purifying process, part of a natural cycle essential to human life. But menstrual blood and menstruating women were also thought to be corrupting.

In Shakespeare’s plays, blood makes many appearances, both spoken and staged, from bleeding wounds to the rebellious ‘high’ blood of youth. Lander Johnson examines Romeo and Juliet’s love affair in the light of early modern beliefs about weaning and sexual appetites.

“Writing about birth and infancy reveals that early moderns were as anxious about their children’s health as we are but for them the pressing questions were: should I breastfeed my baby myself or give it to a wet nurse? How and when should I wean it to food? What sort of food?” she says.

“ ̽��ֱ��wrong decision at this early stage of life could have a fatal outcome and was thought to not only form the child’s blood in either a healthy or corrupted state but also to shape the child’s moral appetites for the rest of their lives.”

Blood is synonymous with family and, in elite circles, with dynasty. Contributor Katharine Craik (Oxford Brookes ̽��ֱ��) explores character and social class through references to blood in Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V. In these plays about warfare and the relationships between royalty and common men, blood is often a substance that eliminates the differences between soldiers who die together in arms, their blood mingling in the dirt of the battlefield.

“Frequently these same descriptions turn into assertions of an essential difference between aristocratic and vulgar bloods,” says Lander Johnson. “Shakespeare is particularly inventive at building character through distinctions of this kind.”

In contrast, Ben Parsons (Leicester ̽��ֱ��) looks at blood and adolescence in the context of the medieval classroom where ‘too much blood’ was understood to cause wild and unruly behaviour. Medieval pedagogues were concerned about how the ‘full blood’ of students ought to be managed through the kind of material they were asked to read and when, the sort of food they ate while learning, and the style of punishment administered to those who were inattentive.

Blood Matters makes a valuable contribution to the history of the body and its place in literature and popular thought. It draws together scholarship that offers insight into both theory and practice during a period that saw the beginnings of empiricism and an overturning of the folklore that governed early medicine.

Today's scientists understand blood as a liquid comprising components essential to good health. But English remains a language peppered with references to blood that hint at our conflicted relationship with a liquid vital to human life.

A collection of essays explores understandings of a vital bodily fluid in the period 1400-1700. Its contributors offer insight into both theory and practice during a period that saw the start of empiricism and an overturning of the folklore that governed early medicine.

̽��ֱ��book brings together scholarship on blood to bridge the conventional boundaries between disciplines.

Bonnie Lander Johnson

'Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library (Keynes.D.2.7)

Detail from William Harvey's De motu cordis (experiment confirming direction of blood flow)

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Yes

Earliest humans had diverse range of body types, just as we do today

jeh98 — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 09:14:54 +0000

One of the dominant theories of our evolution is that our genus, Homo, evolved from small-bodied early humans to become the taller, heavier and longer legged Homo erectus that was able to migrate beyond Africa and colonise Eurasia. While we know that small-bodied Homo erectus – averaging less than five foot and under eight stone – were living in Georgia in southern Europe by 1.77 million years ago, the timing and geographic origin of the larger body size that we associate with modern humans has, until now, remained unresolved.

But a joint study by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Tübingen (Germany), published today in the Journal of Human Evolution, has now shown that the main increase in body size occurred tens of thousands of years after Homo erectus left Africa, and primarily in the Koobi Fora region of Kenya. According to Manuel Will, a co-author of the study from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at Tübingen, “the evolution of larger bodies and longer legs can thus no longer be assumed to be the main driving factor behind the earliest excursions of our genus to Eurasia”.

Researchers say the results from a new research method, using tiny fragments of fossil to estimate our earliest ancestors’ height and body mass, also point to the huge diversity in body size we see in humans today emerging much earlier than previously thought.

“What we’re seeing is perhaps the beginning of a unique characteristic of our own species – the origins of diversity,” said Dr Jay Stock, co-author of the study from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology. “It’s possible to interpret our findings as showing that there were either multiple species of early human, such as Homo habilis, Homo ergaster and Homo rudolfensis, or one highly diverse species. This fits well with recent cranial evidence for tremendous diversity among early members of the genus Homo.”

“If someone asked you ‘are modern humans 6 foot tall and 70kg?’ you’d say ‘well some are, but many people aren’t,’ and what we’re starting to show is that this diversification happened really early in human evolution,” said Stock.

̽��ֱ��study is the first in 20 years to compare the body size of the humans who shared the earth with mammoths and sabre-toothed cats between 2.5 and 1.5 million years ago. It is also the first time that many fragmentary fossils – some as small as toes and tiny ankle bones no more than 5cm long – have been used to make body size estimates.

Comparing measurements of fossils from sites in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Georgia, the researchers found that there was significant regional variation in the size of early humans during the Pleistocene. Some groups, such as those who lived in South African caves, averaged 4.8 feet tall; some of those found in Kenya’s Koobi Fora region would have stood at almost 6 foot, comparable to the average of today´s male population in Britain.

“Basically every textbook on human evolution gives the perspective that one lineage of humans evolved larger bodies before spreading beyond Africa. But the evidence for this story about our origins and the dispersal out of Africa just no longer really fits,” said Stock. “ ̽��ֱ��first clues came from the site of Dmanisi in Georgia where fossils of really small-bodied people date to 1.77 million years ago. This has been known for several years, but we now know that consistently larger body size evolved in Eastern Africa after 1.7 million years ago, in the Koobi Fora region of Kenya.”

“We tend to simplify our interpretations because the fossil record is patchy and we have to explain it in some way. But revealing the diversity that exists is just as important as those broad, sweeping explanations.”

Previous studies have been based on small samples of only 10-15 fossils because techniques for calculating the height and body mass of individuals required specific pieces of bone such as the hip joint or most of a leg bone. Stock and Will have used a sample size three times larger, estimating body size for over 40 specimens contained in collections all over Africa and Georgia, making it the largest comparative study conducted so far.

Instead of waiting for new fossils to be discovered and hoping that they contained these specific bones, Stock and Will decided to try a different approach and make use of previously over-looked fossils.

In what Stock describes as a “very challenging project,” they spent a year developing new equations that allowed them to calculate the height and body mass of individuals using much smaller bones, some as small as toes. By comparing these bones to measurements taken from over 800 modern hunter-gatherer skeletons from around the world and applying various regression equations, the researchers were able to estimate body size for many new fossils that have never been studied in this way before.

“In human evolution we see body size as one of the most important characteristics, and from examining these ‘scrappier’ fossils we can get a much better sense of when and where human body size diversity arose. Before 1.7 million years ago our ancestors were seldom over 5 foot tall or particularly heavy in body mass.

“When this significant size shift to much heavier, taller individuals happened, it occurred primarily in one particular place – in a region called Koobi Fora in northern Kenya around 1.7 million years ago. That means we can now start thinking about what regional conditions drove the emergence of this diversity, rather than seeing body size as a fixed and fundamental characteristic of a species,” said Stock.

Inset images – the landscape of the West Turkana region of Kenya where the 'Nariokotome boy' skeleton was discovered, credit Manuel Will; table of estimated heights and weights of early Homo during the Pleistocene.

New research harnessing fragmentary fossils suggests our genus has come in different shapes and sizes since its origins over two million years ago, and adds weight to the idea that humans began to colonise Eurasia while still small and lightweight.

What we’re seeing is perhaps the beginning of a unique characteristic of our own species – the origins of diversity.

Jay Stock

Cast of the 'Nariokotome boy' (Homo ergaster) skeleton

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Yes

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) and the books that made the father of anatomy

amb206 — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 07:00:00 +0000

Andreas Vesalius was an ambitious young man who was not shy of self-publicity. Born in Flanders 500 years ago, he had his eye on one of the most prestigious roles in medicine. He sought an appointment as personal physician to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. To optimise his chances, Vesalius set out to demonstrate his extensive knowledge of the workings of the human body. One of the ways he did this was to publish in 1543 an extraordinary tome known as the Fabrica, in reference to its Latin title which translates as ‘Seven books on the fabric of the human body’.

Vesalius dedicated the Fabrica to Charles V and presented the Emperor with a copy of what must be the ultimate CV. “Vesalius was only 28 when he produced the Fabrica and its companion piece the Epitome. He was already an accomplished physician and anatomist. He’d made a name for himself and developed connections all over Europe. His portrayal of himself in his books suggests that he was supremely confident of his abilities. Today we would probably label him as brash,” said Dr Sachiko Kusukawa, who has curated an online exhibition celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Vesalius on the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library website.

In keeping with his objective of promoting his career, Vesalius appears centre stage in the illustration on the frontispiece of the Fabrica. As the historian Dr Andrew Cunningham explains in a short film for the exhibition, Vesalius shows himself as the star of the show, performing a dissection surrounded by crowds of admirers. Most striking are three figures in togas who represent the learning of the ancient world. They are Galen, Aristotle and Hippocrates and their presence in the picture underlines the way in which the scientists of the Renaissance were reviving the hands-on practice of anatomy in classical times after a long period in which it had fallen from favour.

Almost as remarkable as the Fabrica is the Epitome, also published by Vesalius in 1543 and presented to Charles V’s son, the future Philip II of Spain. Now considered watershed publications in the history of anatomy, these books were innovative in both content and form. By means of his text and illustrations, Vesalius sought to restore the art of anatomy to its rightful place as the foundation of medicine. With their daring use of a range of visual devices – from full-length posed figures to classical sculptures to paper pop-ups to illustrate the positions of the organs – both books are nothing less than works of art.

Scholars have been unable to discover how many copies of the Fabrica or the Epitome were produced – but it is likely to have been between 300 and 500 copies, judging from other scientific books of the period. ̽��ֱ��surviving copies are now scattered worldwide in public and private collections where they are considered rare and precious treasures that capture the essence of an era awakening to scientific endeavour. On the rare occasions that copies come up for sale they change hands for sums that reflect their historical significance as books produced by a man often described as the ‘father of modern anatomy’. In 1998 a copy of the Fabrica that had been presented to Charles V was sold by Christie’s auction house for $1,652,000.

By virtue of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s 800-year-old history, and its legacy of well-endowed libraries and generous benefactions, the ̽��ֱ�� Library is fortunate to have, in its collection of 16th century medical texts, four copies of the first edition and two copies of the second edition of the Fabrica. In addition, the Library has a unique hand-coloured copy of the Epitome once owned by the Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge, Alexander Macalister (1844-1919).

Everything about these books is designed to impress those who came into contact with them. “ ̽��ֱ��Fabrica and Epitome were lavish productions which reflect the skills of the very best artists and craftsman. ̽��ֱ��wood blocks were cut in Italy and the books were printed in Basel which was then an important centre for printing. These were not text books aimed at students and nor were they made to be taken into the dissection theatre or to the bedsides of the sick or injured," said Kusukawa.

"Rather, Vesalius's books were complex statements about classical ideals of medicine and the role of anatomy. They demonstrated through their beautiful illustrations his grasp of human anatomy, and the detailed knowledge he’d acquired through carrying out dissections. Such books would have been purchased by learned medical colleagues to add to prized collections of weighty tomes of knowledge."

“At a time when most medical texts were small notebooks, Vesalius opted for a big-is-beautiful approach. ̽��ֱ��Fabrica measures 43 cm by 27 cm and the Epitome is even larger at 55.8 cm by 37.4 cm – and their generous dimensions allowed Vesalius to commission illustrations that work on a grand scale. ̽��ֱ��illustrations are wood cuts. It’s a technique in which the space between the lines in finished image is created by using a knife to cut away the surface of the wood block and the skills required to achieve the fine lines in the illustrations are quite exceptional,” said Kusukawa.

No-one knows for certain the identity of the artists whom Vesalius commissioned to produce the 300 or so illustrations that feature in the Fabrica and Epitome – though past scholars have speculated that Vesalius worked with the Venetian painter Titian or one of his pupils. What is certain is that Vesalius must have collaborated closely with his artists and craftsman to translate his first-hand knowledge of the anatomy and morphology of the human body into drawings. As a fusion of science and art, the illustrations reflect the artistic conventions of the Renaissance – for example in the stance of the human figures and the idyllic landscape backdrops in which they are posed.

An ingenious use of paper cut-outs and pop-ups to show the positioning of the organs in the body was developed by Vesalius in partnership with the artists and craftspeople involved in the production of his books. They are a neat solution to the problem of showing how the body is composed of layers and how its component parts work together. Decorated initial letters to the sections of and within the books are another notable feature. Each decorated letter tells a story relevant to the text: one shows grave robbing for corpses to dissect, another suggests how to boil a body in a cauldron, and yet another how to articulate a skeleton.

Vesalius means weasel and it was a name of which the great anatomist was proud. ̽��ֱ��illustration for the frontispiece of the Fabrica is topped by a coat of arms bearing three weasels and held aloft by a pair of chubby putti. Vesalius’s strategy to impress the powerful inner circle of Charles V paid off: in 1543, immediately after the publication of the Fabrica, he was appointed physician to the Holy Roman Emperor. Five hundred years after his birth, copies of the books he produced exist in the collections of one of the world’s most important and extensive libraries. ̽��ֱ��Fabrica and Epitome continue to impress all who see them – and now for the first time they can be viewed online with an accompanying commentary highlighting some of their remarkable features and setting them in historical context.

In her book Picturing the book of nature: image, text, and argument in sixteenth-century human anatomy and medical botany ( ̽��ֱ�� of Chicago Press, 2012) Sachiko Kusukawa discusses some of the images that feature in the Fabrica and Epitome.

Inset images: a portrait of Vesalius in 1543; the multi-layered manikin in the Epitome; an initial from the 1543 Fabrica (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library)

Born 500 years ago, Andreas Vesalius has iconic status in the history of science. Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library holds several copies of the remarkable books that he published to revive the lost art of anatomy and promote his own career as a physician. Historian Dr Sachiko Kusukawa has curated an online exhibition to celebrate Vesalius's achievements.

Vesalius's books were complex statements about classical ideals of medicine and the role of anatomy. They demonstrated through their beautiful illustrations his grasp of human anatomy, and the detailed knowledge he’d acquired through carrying out dissections.

Sachiko Kusukawa

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Vesalius undertaking a dissection, in the hand-coloured frontispiece to his 'Epitome' (1543)

Yes