Anatomy

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2002

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind's quest to understand the human body. The Greeks thought we were built like pigs, and when Renaissance man first cut his sacred flesh it was an act of heresey. We trace the noble ambitions of medical science to the murky underworld of Victorian grave robbing, we trace 2000 years of anatomical study. From the great showman Vesalius, enthralling the Renaissance Artists in the operating theatres of Italy to the sad and gruesome pursuits of Burke and Hare, Anatomy is mankind's often frustrated attempt to understand the body of man. What role has science, religion and art played in the quest to understand the male and the female body?With Harold Ellis, Clinical Anatomist, School of Biomedical Sciences, King's College, London; Ruth Richardson, Historian, and author of Death, Dissection and the Destitute, Phoenix Press; Andrew Cunningham, Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the History of Medicine, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for down learning the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:11.0	Hello, the first great anatomist who laid down the principles of the workings of the human
0:15.4	body for the next 1300 years was Galen.
0:18.5	He learned his trade in an unusual arena.
0:20.8	He was physician to the gladiators.
0:22.4	Yes, those gladiators, yes those gladiators,
0:23.5	Kirca Marcus Aurelius, whose physician he later became.
0:27.2	The wounds of war of all was provided an opportunity for surgeons to advance their
0:30.7	craft.
0:31.7	Public superstitions about the cutting up of the body have meant that anatomy has been considered
0:35.9	with suspicion, often deemed a vile and repulsive subject.
0:39.9	But for some doctors and their students, theirsection was the ultimate act of expiration and discovery
0:44.6	and formed the bedrock of the science of surgery.
0:47.9	How did anatomy solve the mysteries of the form and function of the body?
0:51.4	How did the church react to the cutting up and dissecting of
0:53.9	God's greatest work and how did popular discuss towards the way that corpses
0:58.0	were treated affect the development of the science? With me to discuss the history of anatomy is Ruth Richardson, research associate of the Medical
1:06.8	Humanities Unit University College London and author of Death, Dissection and
1:11.0	the Destitute.
1:12.0	Andrew Cunningham, who's welcome trust senior
1:14.6	research fellow in the history of medicine at the Department of History and
	...

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