Please note, it will be difficult to understand this essay without referring to the image and surrounding text which I am unable to reproduce here. It belongs to The Wellcome Institute but it can be seen at their site here. A video showing the flaps being lifted in stages, is available here.
On the Cusp of Change - Anxiety and
Ambivalence, Empiricism and Protestantism in Raynalde's 'The Woman' (1540.)
‘The Woman’ thought to have been published by Thomas Raynald(e) in 1540,
is the earliest surviving, English fugitive sheet. [1] It depicts and describes a Galenic
understanding of the female reproductive system. These types of broadside,
distinguished by three to seven layers of flaps representing the internal
organs with surrounding text providing their names and descriptions of their
supposed functions, first appeared in
Germany in 1538. The image itself is first seen in Nuremberg engraved by Cornelis
Bos and printed by Hans Guldenmundt in 1538 or 9.[2] It is very
likely that Raynald collaborated with Thomas Geminus whose interest in fugitive
sheets has been well established
(Carlino 1999. p67) and whose similar work appears in 'Compendiosa
Totius Anatomiae Delineatio' (1545) containing images
which also appear in Raynald’s edition
of the translation of E. Rueslin’s The Byrth of Mankynde
(1545), the first English
language obstetric work .[3][4]
Strangely, ‘The Woman’ has received very little critical attention. This study
intends to situate it within its genre and within shifting discourses around
anatomy. It will argue for its importance in its own right as a text which
reveals anxiety and ambivalence about new and radical changes in English
attitudes towards medicine and the body.
Specifically, it addresses the approaching shift of priorities from
scholasticism to empiricism and from Catholic to Lutheran ideas of anatomy.
‘Fugitive papers,’ (a direct translation of the German fliegende Blatter) have been neglected
by scholars historically. They received little scholarly interest until the
1920s when Le Roy Crummer began cataloguing them. Another long pause ensued
before Andrea Carlino created his catalogue Paper
Bodies: A Catalogue of Anatomical Fugitive Sheets 1538-1687 in 1999 arguing
that they be recognised as a genre, “distinctive in their iconographical
structure and typographical form, which remained unchanged for decades despite
the refinement in representational techniques and the progress of anatomy
during the course of the sixteenth century” (p 105.) The vernacular text too,
he argues, constitutes a ‘genre that stands apart from the development of
scientific research and remains within the pre-vesalian scientific tradition”
(p105.) They have, therefore, been regarded as marginal to the history of
medicine and of little value, artistically.
Riffkin et al in their study of depictions of human anatomy dismiss them
in a few sentences saying “almost all are dreadful as anatomy and crude as art”
(2011. p25.) They go on to say “They were intended for popular amusement or for
the walls of barber-surgeons, pharmacies and midwives rooms” (p25.) This
association of fugitive papers with ‘low culture’ or the lowest status medical
practitioners is consistent with their genre, the broadside. In The
Other Print Tradition (1995), Cathy Preston discusses the extent to which
privileged discourses have marginalised broadsides and chapbooks perceiving
them as ‘sites and sources of social and cultural contamination, disintegration
and decay’ (p77) in their own time and as of little worth even today. The aim
of the study she conducts with Michael Preston is to show that these cheap
publications constitute a wealth of sources which reveal social and cultural
interests of lower status groups but also those which span all classes. I would suggest that medical broadsides are
an important example of texts with just such a wide audience.
Andrea Carlino too focuses on the cultural and social value of these
texts but does not see ‘The Woman’ as interesting in this way, describing it as
‘limited to the names of the parts indicated on the figure with letters” and
going on to group it with other vernacular texts which contain ‘sparse
information,’ are ‘unaffected by change ‘and ‘seem stuck in a complacent
conservatism’ (p106.) Many scholars have dismissed vernacular fugitive sheets
as purely commercial ventures that made little effort to update their contents
in accordance with the advances in anatomical knowledge for which the sixteenth
century is distinguished. An argument of this kind could be made for two
broadsheets published in London in 1559 and 1599[5] which
reproduce the first three quarters of the text of The Woman almost unchanged
and add a nine point description of female anatomy. [6] These have
been retitled ‘The Anatomie of the Inward Parts of Woman, Very Necessary to be
Knowne to Physitians, Surgians and all Other that Desire to Know Themselves.’
Such references , Carlino tells us “to a non-specialised public could be seen
as the vulgar promotional rhetoric of printmakers and printsellers eager not to
limit their range of customers to any specific socio-professional group”
(p110.) However, the first known
publication of The Woman with its moral conclusion and choice of image is, I
would argue, far more interesting and addresses developments in anatomy which
would make themselves more fully felt in the coming decades. It is rich in just
those social and cultural details for which broadsheets are valuable, revealing
the shifts in which empirical observation began to be
prioritised over textual authority and Lutheran approaches to anatomy gained
influence.
The conflict between a textually-based, university-centred, medical
writing in Latin and practical guilds of trained barbers, surgeons and
apothecaries who wrote remedies and advice in the vernacular (when they wrote
at all) was not new in 1540. Claire Jones explores these distinct ‘discourse
communities’ and cites an argument for the superiority of the latter from 15th
century Harley MS 1736 f. 9r-v
“Techynge of bokys, yf at all yt be profytabyll, yet yt ys not allynges
so sufficient as ys the othyr maner of anathomie, for the partes of the membyrs
may better be sene with eyne in ded than in letters wretyne onn the boke”(in
Taavitsainen and Pahta. 2004. p27.)
An increasing desire to
‘see’ the internal organs of the body rather than simply read descriptions of
them resulted in an increase in dissections which were opened to larger numbers
of people. Detailed drawings of dissected bodies were made and, with the advent
of printing, circulated to an even larger audience during the sixteenth
century. Fugitive sheets with their individuated flaps mimicking dissection and
their suitability fulfilled this desire for visual representation, albeit with
varying degrees of accuracy, at a low price.
However, the dominance of the universities and their reliance upon
verbal description which drew on ancient philosophy and, particularly, Galen
could not be overturned easily. It required the scholar, Vesalius, to make what
is credited as the first effective criticism of reliance on textual authority
and promotion of empiricism in his 1543 book De Humani Corporis Fabrica. Carlino argues that his great
achievement was “an inversion of the order of priorities between text and
dissection, reading and direct observation (p7.) The eye and empirical evidence
was to become more central to anatomy than the word and ancient authority.
We see, in ‘The Woman’ a
tension between ‘what is seen’ and ‘what is written,’ a rejection of some
ancient wisdom, a foregrounding of the visual and a mixture of discourses. The
writer begins by remitting his reader to the male sheet (since lost) to
‘beholde’ the operation of organs common to both sexes, immediately privileging
the image and asserting its authority.
He describes several organs, giving a particularly detailed description
of the uterus including what appears to be a fairly accurate description of the
endometrium, “a certayn thycke
carnosyte, which boweth downwarde” before adding “Some there be þat wryte that there shulde be
many selles or distinctions in the Matrice, the which is not true: for other distinction is there none.” This
‘writing’ is rejected because it does not accord with what can be seen in the
image. Irma Taavitsainen, in her study of the language of different categories
of medical writing, describes the addition of any form of commentary upon
medical claims as ‘at the heart of the intellectual mainstream of
scholasticism” (2004 p40) but, here, it is used here to prioritise empirical
observation over that very textual authority.
However, at other times, ‘The Woman’
presents the writings of ‘the phylosophers’ seemingly uncritically. The idea
that males were gestated on the right and females on the left is repeated
without any indication of doubt although he ensures the reader knows that this
is said and not seen by his use of ‘they wryte’ and ‘they bid.’ Equally the
description of the tightly closed cervix of the pregnant uterus is ‘accordyng
to the doctors and of physicke and phylosophers.’ This citing of authority is
almost certainly to affirm veracity but it is very different to his description
of positions and measurements of organs which requires no such authority but
just ‘are.’ The impression is that these have been seen and copied and require
no further authority. The evidence is presented to be seen by all.
However, not all of ‘The Woman’s’
information is available to all because parts of it are written in (rather
faulty) Latin and thereby removed from the understanding of most of the medical
practitioners outside the universities.
In an early feminist study on the discourse of reproduction, Eve Keller
notes that writers demurred particularly about translating into English the “secrets
of the female generative parts” (1960 p51.)
Keller cites Raynald’s anxiety, when producing The Byrth of Mankinde, that such sensitive information would be
available to ‘every boy and knave’ (p82.) Such concerns about restricting
access to certain knowledge to the scholars could certainly be considered
conservative.
This becomes particularly interesting when
considered in relation to the emerging Lutheran approach to anatomy which held
knowledge of it to be of great moral value and facilitated the spread of
anatomical drawings. Valerie Nutton
urges us to look at changes in attitude to anatomy not only in terms of the
supercedence of Galen by Vasalius but ‘as part of a broader movement for the
understanding of man’s place in God’s creation” (1993 p11.)
‘The
Woman’ considers the religious implications of the study of anatomy, concluding
with the passage, “To honest and virtuous people, everything is occasion and
mater whereby they may glorifie and prayse God. The wicked and ungodly,
contrariwyse in all thinges, seake to augment theyr leudness and devilysh
lust.” This notion of glorifying God
through appreciation and knowledge of the anatomy of man is most often
associated with Lutheranism but is found in both Catholic and Protestant
writing having entered Christianity via Augustinian semiology and meditations
upon the requirement of the Delphic Maxim to ‘know thyself.’[7]
However, Catholic England’s attitude towards dissection and anatomical
depictions was complex and mixed with powerful social taboos. Krishan Thadani’s
2012 study refuting the myth that the Catholic Church ever banned dissection
discusses the combination of late medieval papal bulls and social factors which
led people to consider dissection and the study of anatomy to be somewhat
indecent and unchristian. It is Vivian Nutton who most clearly shows in her
influential essay ‘Wittenberg Anatomy’ that at Wittenberg ‘the links [between
anatomy and glorifying the handiwork of God] were much tighter’ (1993 p12.)
Carlino too describes a ‘Protestant redefinition’ of nosce teipsum (know yourself) and cites Melanchthon’s rationale,
““It is
especially appropriate and profitable for us ourselves to see the whole series,
shapes, layout, powers and function of each of the parts… (T)rue wisdom is the
recognition of God and the consideration of Nature, one must admit that one
must learn anatomy whereby the causes of many actions and changes are made
visible” (1550. Quoted in Kusakawa The Transformation, p105, n.135)”(p11.)
Lutheran theology stressed the
connectedness of body & soul and believed that understanding the body had
important moral benefits. For this reason, not only doctors but all Christian
scholars were to study anatomy. Fugitive sheets were produced for this purpose
in Wittenberg by 1560 and made widely available to people of all social status.
At the same time as the bible was being made available to all literate
Christians, anatomy also became more accessible. However, accuracy was less
important than drawing the right religious connections (Nutton p17.) Among the first printers to produce strongly
Protestant works after the succession of Edward VI was (probably the younger)
Thomas Raynald.
The positive attitude towards anatomy
found in ‘The Woman’ combined with its strong defense against possible
criticisms on religious grounds mirrors a climate in which an ill-defined
perception of anatomy as salacious and unchristian were beginning to give way
to an emerging Protestant desire to ‘know thyself.’ It is significant that later
editions of this text, when Protestantism was more securely established, were
addressed to ‘all those who wish to know themselves.”
In the 1540 edition, however, religious
defensiveness and anxiety could almost be argued to overshadow the positive
Christian message of the conclusion. We see this ambivalence in the image
chosen. Avoiding those with erotic poses or splayed, frog-like postures so
commonly seen at this time, Raynald’s model is Cornelis Bos’ Eve with her knees
pressed primly together. Unlike the earlier Bos, in which Eve’s waist, breasts
and stomach are clearly defined, Raynald’s Eve is covered by a top flap that
appears rather like a high necked apron, descending straight down shapelessly
to her knees obscuring her body. The contours of her breasts and abdomen are
shaded in faintly reflecting the writer’s wish to discourage salacious
interest. In the earlier Bos image,
Eve’s genitals are casually covered by what looks like a flower. This could be
Eve before the fall. In the Raynald edition, it is clearly a fig leaf. Eve is
depicted after her fall for the sin of seeking forbidden knowledge. To uncover
the internal organs, the reader must first remove the symbolically loaded fig
leaf and be led to ask himself what kind of knowledge he is seeking, having
been presented with two dichotomous options in the accompanying text! The
earlier unseemly and unchristian connotations of anatomy are clearly still of
great concern.
I would argue
that ‘The Woman’ far from being complacent in its conservatism, reveals an
awareness of and an anxiety and ambivalence about important intellectual and
religious changes of its time. It emphasises the precedence of empirical
anatomy over scholastic knowledge at one time whilst deferring to the latter at
others and restricting some of its contents to educated men. It claims a positive religious benefit to
anatomy in keeping with emerging Lutheran ideas whilst betraying older Catholic
& social concerns that such studies might be indecent, unchristian and
forbidden. As the earliest English fugitive sheet published at the beginning of
the decade which would see a revolution in anatomy and the establishment of
Protestantism under Edward VI, it is a
valuable record of impending social and cultural change.
*******************
The Woman
Textual Note
(This semi-diplomatic
transcription is of the 1540 text (referred to as ‘Text A,’) wherever the text
is complete. The missing text in the first column has been supplied from the
1559 (Text B) and 1599 (Text C) editions and the supplied text signified with
square brackets. Attempts have been made to use Text A’s preferred spelling.
The final passage is not found in any later edition and I have not attempted to
supply the missing words. A suggestion of the general meaning has been made in
the footnotes. The differences in the three texts have been collated and the
alternative ending to Texts B and C can be found in appendix 3.)
The signification of such letters, as are grauen in this
figure.
For so muche as the declaration of most of the principal partes is
sufficientlye set forth in the anatomy of man, [8] therefore
wyll I remyt you thether [9]there
to beholde the operation of them, and here we wyll declare the situation and
maner of suche partes as are in woman different from the partes in man, how be
it, first ye shall understand the
significacion of the letters which are grauen with in thys figure.
A) Signifyeth[10] the gully
of the throte
B) The Lunges
C) The harte
D) The myddrefe[11]
E) The inner parte of the throte pype, passing
through the bolke[12]
and the lunges into the stomacke.
F) Sygnifyeth the mouth of the stomacke.
G) The stomacke
H) Signifyeth the botome of the stomacke.
I)
The
nethermouth of the stomacke
K) The lyuer. Nexte unto thys letter .K. you se
this letter V þe which shulde be .L. and
it signifieth the gaule. [13]
M) Vena porta, the lyuer vayne.
N) The splene
O) Sygnyfyeth the place and vessel to the whych
the flowerres[14]
be deriuyed from the liuer. Non[15]
menses in primis sensum erumpunt ab
ipso iccinore, uelut per quedam interuella, donec peruentum sit ab illa (cuper[16] primum
ceruicis pudende[17]
exortum) acetabula quos hec, quasi hihanti[18]et aperto
ore effundunt [19]
P. Signyfyeth the kidneys. In Latine, Renes.
[Q. The bladder, in Latine Velcica: this
bladder receiueth the waterie parts &]urine [which descend]eth from [the
reynes] and it lyeth [in the lower] part of the [bellie before] the wombe [or
matri]ce[20]
of the woman, [whose] necke entreth
in [at, and] is fastened to the[ nec]ke of the wombe though[21] the which
natu[r]ally it sendeth forth the
[uri]ne.
R. Signifieth þe great [vay]ne, whyche is
dery[ued] out of the liuer, cal[led] in Laten parigibba, & [Chilis:
Co]ncaua venarum [mater, the] mother
of all [vaynes, and] from whom [and
through] his bruan[ches(other] smaller vay[nes) bloud] is conueyed [into all]
parts of mans [body.]
[S.]T.V.X Signifi[eth t]he wombe where[in
m]ankynd is conceiued, nouryshed and fostred, unto the time it be of a certayn
myght & force, and than[22] naturally
is sent & brought forth into the world: and it is called in laten Matrix:
before it, is the bladder:[23]
but it is somewhat hyer then the bladder: the bottome of it extendeth it selfe
unto the nauel.
S. [24]The botome
of the wombe, where is a certayn thycke carnosyte,[25] which
boweth downwarde, and causeth a distinction to be in the wombe, wherefore T. signifieth
the right syde of the Matrice V. the left syde. Some there be Þat [wry]te, that there shulde [be] many
selles or disti[nctions] in the Matrice, the [whyc]he is not true: for [other
d]isctinction than the [fleshie] parte whych is [signify]ed by S,) dothe [cause, is] there none. In the ry[ght] syde, as
philsophers wryte, lyeth alwaye the man chylde, in the lefte the woman chylde.[26]
And to knowe whether the concepcion be male or female, they bid to marke
whether it moue more on the right syde then the left, for than it is a man, if on the lefte more,
then on the ryght syde, then it is a woman: and for Þat cause also is to be noted the two brestes, the ryght & the
lefte: if the ryght be greater or[27]
harder then the left, it is a token of a man: if the lefte, of a woman, and if
she haue more payne and dolour in the ryght syde, lykewyse it sygnyfyeth the
man chyld, if in the left, a woman. Whether it be man or woman accordyng to the doctours of physicke
and phylosophers, when the seade is fyrste conceyued in the matrix, it
encloseth it selfe after such a sorte, that the poynte of a needle cannot entre
in at it but by violence. And the fyrst syxe dayes that it is conceyued, it
remaineth crude and whyte lyke mylke. Then in the space of other ix dayes it
waxeth redde, and is become thycke bloude: then in other twelve dayes, it
begynneth to come to some fashyon: then in the xviii.dayes followyng, the face
and other pryncipall membres, begyn to growe in to a ful shape and forme in
longitude, latitude and profunditie. In the reste of the tyme unto the birth it
is comforted, and prepared to come forth, the whiche many tymes chaunceth[28]
in the seuenth moneth, & the
chyld proueth[29]
and doth very wel: but in the .viii monethe, fewe or none proue aboue[30]
the latter ende of the .ix. agayne, if it be borne, it proueth very wel, that
is þe most comune[31]
course forty wekes after the concepcion. The maner how the child lyeth in the
mothers wombe, is thys: the face lyeth on bothe the knees, both the handes beyng
between the face and the knees: after such maner that the nose dependeth[32] betwene
the knees, and ether of the eyes on ether of the knees [33]: so lyeth
it round in maner, and the face towarde the inwarde part of the wombe: and thys
partly haue I shewed you of the operacion of the matrice.[34]
X Significat os sive portam matricis, que
reseratur in naturali regressu
suscipiens viri sperma.[35]
Y. Collum matricis quod est longitudinis sex digitorum, inferius
angustum habens orificum per quod
vefice meatus urinam emittit. [36]
Z. Sunt due ingentes arteriales vene, quibus
matrix affixa est nuncupate ale matricis. [37]
* Sunt testiculi mulierum utraque parte ipsius vulve[38] fundi ex
lateribus siti. Similem masculis
circumvolutionem recipientes magnitudine multo minores quam masculi
[39]
Finis
[40]To honest
& vertuous people, every thing is occasion and mater wherby they may
glorifie & prayse God. The wicked & ungodly, contrariwyse in al
thinges, seake to augment theyr leudness & devilysh lust. Wherefore good
Christian reders when Þey shalt read or beholde thys figure, wherin is expressed the ymage
of man & woman both within &
without, lowly yelde thanks to the
mighty God of nature, diuisor & creator of al such thynges & haue no
rebaude [41]&
unreuer[ent?][42]
communication of Þe […] for þat were greatly
[…]rtumely[43]
of nat[…] plesure of almighty […][44][45]
[1]
London. Wellcome Library. EPB 290.6. Available here:
http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1665833~S12
[2]
Vienna. MAK-Osterreichisches Museum fur angewandte Kunst. (Carlino:Cat. 8)
[3]
For discussion of the links between Raynald and Geminus see Crummer ‘The Copper Plates in Raynalde and
Geminus’ Proceedings of the Royal Society
of Medicine. 1927. 20: 53-6
[4]A
complication when discussing ‘The Woman’ is that Thomas Raynalde, the
translator of it and self-described physician, is now thought to be a different
person to the printer who might have been Thomas Raynald the elder or his son,
also named Thomas Raynald! See the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for
a discussion of the three Raynald(e)s.
[5]
Wellcome Library, London. EPB/D 296 &EPB 7211
[6]
See Appendix for this description entitled ‘ A perfect and particular
description of the secret parts of the body of woman with the signification of
the letters contained in the same.’
[7]
De Trinitate. Book 10.
[8]
The Anatomy of Man is lost.
[9]
thether there] B C thether:Ther(e)
[10]
Signifyeth] B C omitted. (Also omitted from F & H)
[11]
The diaphragm
[12]
In common usage, bolke meant ‘burp.’ It may refer to the pharynx in this
context.
[13]
Gallbladder
[14]
Menstrual flow
[15]
Non] nam. Although this changes ‘not’ to ‘since,’ the general meaning is
maintained by the qualifying velut phrase.
[16]
Error. B & C correct to ‘super.’
[17]
Text B changes to pudendae to agree
with cervicis – shameful cervix.
[18]
Hihanti] hianti
[19] The menses
do not come straight from the liver, but rather at certain intervals, until it might
arrive at those acetabula (shamefully
above the opening of the cervix OR above the opening of the shameful cervix ) from which these [menses] pour out, as if
from a gaping open mouth.
[20]
In B ‘Matrix’ but it is likely text A is using the ablative ‘matrice’ which
would be correct following the proposition ‘before.’
[21]
B & C correct to ‘through’.
[22]
The writer frequently uses ‘than’ where we would expect to see ‘then’ and vice
versa.’ This might be a copying error from a secretary hand where ‘a’ and ‘e’
can be confused and later texts ‘correct’ much of it but use of the two words
interchangeably does occur in other texts of this time.
[23] C omits ‘and it is called in Laten Matrix:
before it is the bladder.’ Probably an ‘eye skip’ error.
[24]
B & C ‘Signifieth.’
[25]
The endometrium. Literally ‘fleshy place’ in Latin. Note that two sentences
later it is referred back to as ‘fleshie parte.’
[26]
This idea is attributed to Parmenides in the 5th or 6th century
BCE, was taken up by Galen and continued to be accepted as true until the 18th
century.
[27]
In B ‘and’
[28]
Chances. Happens.
[29]
Proveth – to be good, sound, correct. Akin
to current obstetric term ‘to be viable.’
[30]
prove above] B C prove. About. This clarifies the meaning considerably.
[31]
Common
[32]Hangs
down
[33]
Text B omits “both the hands….ether of the knees”
[34]
Here B & C stop following A and provide instead the ending ‘A Perfecte and
Particular Description…’ (See Appendix 3)
[35]
Sygnifyeth
the mouth or door of the Matrix, which is revealed by a natural withdrawal as
it receives the man's sperm.
[36]
The neck of the matrix which is six fingers long, having below it a narrow
opening through which the movement of the bladder sends forth urine.
[38]
This is either a spelling error of the Latin word ‘vulva’ or the French.
[39]
These
are the female "testicles" positioned on
either side of the base of the
vulva. Although they have a "circumvolution" like that of the male
they are much smaller in size than the male.
[40]
This ‘pointing hand’ symbol emphasises the importance of a passage.
[41]
Ribald. Salacious. Debauched.
[42]
I have supplied the ending which seems most likely.
[43]
Unknown partial word –‘rtumely.’ However, ‘contumely,’ a word from the same
period, means ‘offensive or abusive language.’ A similar meaning would be
consistent with ‘ribaude communication’ here.
[44]
The missing word here is almost certainly ‘God.’
[45]
The general meaning of the final phrase is likely to be that bawdy and
irreverent speech about the image would be displeasing to God.
