https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7772-9372
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ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, a new method for teaching anatomy shifted the professor’s position from the middle of the lecture amphitheatre to one side of the room. In this spot, the wall was used to display a variety of visual ‘flat technologies’ such as blackboards, oil paintings, wallcharts and light projections, among other visual aids. This article studies these changes in the visual culture of anatomy in Spain by analysing the programme developed by José de Letamendi based on giant oil paintings. The authors follow the influence of this new scheme throughout different chairs in Spain up to the first few decades of the twentieth century, focusing on the anatomy theatre of the University of Valladolid as its most prominent example. This analysis examines the relationships between the various flat technologies and puts into perspective the interest of the anatomists of this period in the methodological aspects of teaching.
Acknowledgements
This research has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. The authors would like to thank Prof. Juan Francisco Pastor Vázquez for providing access to the materials preserved in the Anatomical Museum of the School of Medicine of the University of Valladolid, Ramon Barnadas and Aina Fernández Taltavall for the photographs of Letamendi’s oil paintings, and the heirs of Claudio Miguel García Muñoz for their permission to reproduce , which forms part of their father’s historical collection.
Disclosure statement
No potential competing interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 José de Letamendi, ‘Memoria acerca de las fuentes de conocimiento y del método de enseñanza de la Anatomía clásica o descriptiva y general. Escrita con el objeto de concurrir a las oposiciones anunciadas en 5 de julio de 1870 para la provisión de la cátedra del segundo año de la propia asignatura vacante en Madrid’, in Letamendi. Obras completas […] publicadas por su discípulo Rafael Forns, vol. 2 (Madrid: Establecimiento tipo-lit. de F. Rodríguez Ojeda, 1907), 126–230.
2 A first analysis of the collection, focusing on their circulation, in Begoña Torres, ‘Anatomías pintadas: óleos viajeros, mostrados y exhibidos entre España y Francia a finales del siglo XIX’, in Cuerpos representados. Objetos de ciencia artísticos en España, siglos XVIII–XX, ed. Alfons Zarzoso and Maribel Morente (Vitoria Gasteiz: Sans Soleil Ediciones, 2020), 105–24.
3 See Klaus Hentschel, Visual Cultures of Science and Technology: A Comparative History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
4 For this historiographical approach, see Kathryn M. Olesko, ‘Science Pedagogy as Category of Historical Analysis: Past, Present and Future’, Science & Education 15, no. 2–3 (2006): 863–80; John L. Rudolph, ‘Historical Writing on Science Education: A View of the Landscape’, Studies on Science Education 44, no. 1 (2008): 63–82.
5 See, for example, Nick Hopwood, Embryos in Wax: Models from the Ziegler Studio (Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge & Institute of the History of Medicine and University of Bern, 2002); Nick Hopwood, ‘Artist versus Anatomist, Models against Dissection: Paul Zeiller of Munich and the Revolution of 1848’, Medical History 51, no. 3 (2007): 279–308; Anna Maerker, ‘Anatomizing the Trade: Designing and Marketing Anatomical Models as Medical Technologies, ca. 1700–1900’, Technology and Culture 54, no. 3 (2013): 531–62; Anna Maerker, ‘Between Profession and Performance: Displays of Anatomical Models in London, 1831–32’, Histoire, Médecine et Sante 5 (2014): 47–61; Maribel Morente, ‘Un siglo de escultores anatómicos universitarios en España, 1840–1940’, in Zaronso and Morente, Cuerpos representados, 63–86; see also several papers in José Pardo-Tomás, Alfons Zarzoso and Mauricio Sánchez Menchero, eds. Cuerpos mostrados: Regímenes de exhibición de lo humano. Barcelona y Madrid, siglos XVII–XX (Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial; México: Siglo XXI Editores & Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Centro de Investigaciones Interdiscipinares en Ciencias y Humanidades, 2019).
6 Massimiano Bucchi, ‘Images of Science in the Classroom: Wall-Charts and Science Education’, in Visual Cultures of Science: Rethinking Representational Practices in Knowledge Building and Science Communication, ed. Luc Pawels (Hanover, NH and London: University Press of New England, 2005), 90–119.
7 Carin Berkowitz, ‘The Beauty of Anatomy: Visual Displays and Surgical Education in Early Nineteenth-Century London’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, no. 2 (2011): 248–78.
8 ‘Gacetilla de Madrid, 'Est anatómico’, La España, October 10, 1863.
9 Joan Riera, Idealisme i positivisme en la medicina catalana del segle XIX (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1973).
10 Letamendi, ‘Memoria’, 154–76.
11 In the letter to the Minister, he talked about the waste of time and money and asked also for ‘academic effects of merit’. The document is reproduced in Letamendi, ‘Memoria’, 94–199.
12 Catálogo general de la Sección española publicado por la Comisión Regia de España (París: Imprenta General de Ch. Lahure, 1867).
13 Torres, ‘Anatomías pintadas’, 122.
14 Silverio Palafox, ‘Haz y envés del letamendismo neohipocrático’, Medicina & Historia 9 (1965): 3–15; Juan Riera, ‘Letamendi y Turró: Romanticismo y positivismo en la medicina catalana del siglo XIX’, Asclepio 17 (1965): 117–53.
15 Elvira Arquiola, ‘La Antropología en la obra de Letamendi’, in Actas II Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias, ed. M. Hormigón (Zaragoza: Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias, 1984), 31–46; Nicolás Fernández-Medina, Life Embodied: The Promise of Vital Force in Spanish Modernity (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018).
16 Arquiola, ‘La Antropología’.
17 M. Concepción Chillón Rodríguez, ‘El pintor Ramón Martí Alsina (1826–1894): Contrastos de la seva vida a partir d’una documentació inèdita i proposta d’un primer catàleg’ (PhD diss., Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2010), https://ddd.uab.cat/record/98708; Maria Lluïsa Faxedas Brujats, ‘Ramón Martí Alsina, pintor de historia: entre el romanticismo y el realismo’, Goya 344 (2013): 230–45.
18 Letamendi, ‘Memoria’ (The original in Spanish. All translations of Letamendi’s work are by the present authors).
19 Letamendi, ‘Memoria’, 141.
20 Hopwood, ‘Artist versus Anatomist’.
21 Oliver Gaycken, ‘Displaying Knowledge: Intermedial Education’, Early Popular Visual Culture 13, no. 4 (2016): 249–55.
22 Bucchi, ‘Wall-Charts and Science Education.’
23 See Peggy A. Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings and David Linsay Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800–2000 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Caitlin D. Wylie, ‘Teaching Nature Study on the Blackboard in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England’, Archives of Natural History 39 (2012): 59–76.
24 Berkowitz, ‘The Beauty of Anatomy’, 259.
25 For a good analysis, see ibid.
26 Ángel Pulido, Datos para la biografia del Dr. D. José de Letamendi y Manjarrés, Académico de número de la Real de Medicina, etc. Escrita en virtud de nombramiento de dicha corporación y leída en sus sesiones públicas del año 1898 (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico Viuda é Hijos de Manuel Tello, 1898).
27 Pulido, Datos para la biografia; Guillermo Serra Bennasar, Prolegómenos de Anatomía, apuntes tomados á vuela pluma de las lecciones explicadas por el Dr. D. José de Letamendi (Palma de Mallorca: Establecimiento tipográfico de Amengual y Muntaner, 1897).
28 Letamendi, ‘Memoria’, 197.
29 Ibid.
30 Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library of Medicine, ‘Dwight-Emerton Sagittal Skull Model’, OnView: Digital Collections & Exhibits, https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/13137 (accessed January 23, 2020).
31 Henningl Schmidgen, ‘1900 – The Spectatorium: on Biology’s Audiovisual Archive’, Grey Room 43 (2011): 42–65.
32 J. Francisco Pastor Vázquez, ‘Diapositivas en cristal’, in Facultad de Medicina de Valladolid, VI Centenario exhibition catalogue (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2006), 256–7; Begoña Torres Gallardo, ‘Anatomía proyectada en el aula. Las placas de vidrio de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Barcelona (1890–1950)’ in Cuerpos mostrados: Regímenes de exhibición de lo humano Barcelona y Madrid, siglos XVII–XX, ed. José Pardo-Tomás, Alfons Zarzoso and M. Sánchez Menchero (Barcelona: Anthropos; México: Siglo XXI & Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinares en Ciencias y Humanidades, 2019).
33 Schmidgen, ‘The Spectatorium’.
34 Letamendi, ‘Memoria’, 206.
35 C.B. Lockwood, ‘An Address on the Teaching of Anatomy’, British Medical Journal 2, no. 1460 (1888): 1372–3.
36 Raúl Velasco Morgado, ‘Pensionados para una ciencia en crisis: la JAE como mecenas de la anatomía macroscópica’, Dynamis 30 (2010): 287–306.
37 On the complex changes of nineteenth-century morphology see Lynn K Nyhart, Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800–1900 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
38 Marcel Guivarch, ‘La réforme Farabeuf de l’enseignement pratique de l’anatomie et de la médecine opératoire. Dix ans rue Vaquelin, 1877–1886’, Histoire des Sciences Médicales 39, no. 1 (2005): 45–57; Sabine Hildebrandt, ‘Lessons to be Learned from the History of Anatomical Teaching in the United States: The Example of the University of Michigan’, Anatomical Sciences Education 3, no. 4 (2010): 202–12.
39 Letamendi, ‘Memoria’.
40 Here we understand academic authority as a social construction of power among scholars based on scientific prestige and the ability to modify university practices and structures.
41 Julián Calleja y Sánchez, Memoria acerca de la construcción científica de las Fuentes de conocimiento y del método de enseñanza de la Anatomía humana (Madrid: Impr. y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra, 1873).
42 José María López Piñero, ‘Las ciencias médicas en la España del siglo XIX’, Ayer 7 (1992): 193–240.
43 Antonio Formica-Corsi, ‘Método y plan de enseñanza de la anatomía descriptiva y exposición somera de las Fuentes de conocimiento de la misma’, La Independencia Médica. Revista de Medicina y de Farmacia 12 (1881): 137–9; 13: 153–4; 16: 189–90; 21: 267–8; 22: 280–1; 27: 349–50 and 33: 433–5.
44 Velasco Morgado, ‘Pensionados para una ciencia en crisis’.
45 Ramón López Prieto, La enseñanza de la Anatomia (Madrid: Imprenta de Enrique Teodoro y Alonso, 1911).
46 This is quite surprising because the copy that we have handled, signed by López Prieto, is dedicated to Calleja.
47 Antonio Herrera Casado, ‘Rafael Forns i Romans, y el nacimiento de una especialidad médica en España, la Otorrinolaringologa’, Medicina e Historia 28, no. 3 (1989): 1–16.
48 Rafael Forns, ‘Exposición de cuadros murales destinados a demostrar la anatomía del aparato auditivo’, in Primer congreso español de Oto-rino-laringología celebrado en Madrid […]. Actas de sus sesiones (Madrid: Establecimiento Tip. de A. Avrial, 1897), 71–6.
49 Rafael Forns, Otiatría, o sea Medicina especial de Oídos (2 vols, Madrid: Imprenta de Idamor Moreno, 1903).
50 For another case study on knowledge transfer through paintings see Naomi Slipp, ‘International Anatomies: Teaching Visual Literacy in the Harvard Lecture Hall’, in Bodies beyond Borders: Moving Anatomies, 1750–1950, ed. Kaat Wils, Raf de Bont and Sokhieng Au (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2017), 197–229.
51 Forns, ‘Exposición de cuadros murales’.
52 Gustaf Retzius, Das Gehörorgan der Wirbelthiere: morphologisch-histologische Studien (2 vols, Stockholm: Samson & Wallin, 1881-1884). On this work see Joseph E. Hawkins, ‘Sketches of Otohistory, Part 6: Gustaf Retzius’, Audiology and Neuro-Otology 10 (2005): 65–8.
53 López Prieto, La enseñanza de la Anatomia.
54 Antonio Riera Villaret, Tratado de técnica anatómica (Barcelona: Librería Médica de Juan Bautista Aragonés, [1917]).
55 Salvino Sierra y Val, Lo que debe ser una Facultad en los tiempos actuales […] Conferencia dada en el 6º Congreso para el Progreso de las Ciencias … (Valladolid: Imprenta Castellana, 1915).
56 Joaquín Trías Pujol, ‘Organización de los Institutos anatómicos y de la enseñanza de la anatomía en Suiza’ (unpublished manuscript, signed in Bern, 1917: archive of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios, Madrid. JAE/T40).
57 Salvino Sierra y Val, ‘[Discurso del] Dr. Salvino Sierra y Val’, in Inauguración del Instituto Anatómico Sierra. 24 de mayo de 1916 (Valladolid: Tipografía cuesta, 1916), 57–69.
58 Ibid.
59 Pulido, Datos para la biografía.
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Notes on contributors
Begoña Torres
Begoña Torres, PhD, is a Professor of Anatomy at the University of Barcelona in Spain. Her research interests include the history of medicine in late-modern Catalonia and the material cultures of anatomy teaching.
Raúl Velasco Morgado
Raúl Velasco-Morgado, MD PhD, teaches History of Medicine and Science at the University of Salamanca in Spain. His research focus on the history of anatomy and embryology (17th-20th centuries), on visual cultures of science and on the process of molecularisation of contemporary biomedicine.