William Hunter, one of the most renowned British anatomists in the eighteenth century, collaborated with draftsman Jan van Rymsdyk (1730-1790) and many other engravers and published the revolutionary atlas Anatomia Uteri Humani Gravidi (Birmingham: J. Baskerville, 1774). Unlike the anatomical books before him, in which the images of human body always sharing the properties of Renaissance art and Baroque art, all the images in Hunter's atlas are realistic depictions of the pieces of human body in an empty background. However, Hunter and all the related artists almost left no written materials about how they made the images for this specific atlas. After a meticulous checking of all the preparing red chalk drawings (figure 1) for this atlas collected now at the Library of Glasglow University, I have found some deliberate adjustments of style in Rymsdyk's drawings for this atlas, and also, the pictorial discrepancies between the preparing drawings and the final engravings tell how the anatomist Hunter selected and edited the images. All the pictorial cues show Hunter's intentional control over the whole process of image-making as well as his possible disagreements with the artists, which on a large scale reveal the cognitive differences towards the female bodies between scientists and the general public. Furthermore, after a check of Hunter's other medical books, this paper also argues that the mechanism held by Hunter constitutes the underlying reasons for the editing of these images.

Authors:
Min Zhang, Wenzhou Business College, China

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Zhang is currently a lecturer of Wenzhou Business College, China. Her interests include the scientific images, the images of female body in medical books and the history of books.

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