Susan Brandt, Temple University
Pennsylvania Hospital, Historical Collections
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Place: Zubrow Auditorium, Pennsylvania Hospital
Free and open to the public.
RSVP to Stacey Peeples, Curator-Lead Archivist, Pennsylvania Hospital, stacey.peeples@uphs.upenn.edu or 215-829-5434.
In 1762, when Dr. William Shippen, Jr., brought Jan Van Rymsdyk’s anatomical drawings and plaster casts from London to Philadelphia, he also conveyed new ideas about the superiority of dissection-based medical education and a culture of medical spectatorship. As university-trained physicians like Shippen launched their medical and obstetrical practices, they used their mastery of anatomy to differentiate themselves from the myriad of female midwives and other healers that populated Philadelphia’s competitive, consumer-driven medical marketplace. Shippen advertised a course of anatomical lectures for medical students and “for the Entertainment of any Gentlemen,” featuring the “curious Phaenominon” of the “Gravid Uterus” illustrated by Van Rymsdyk. The Pennsylvania Hospital board encouraged this “entertaining and profitable” venture, which launched Shippen’s successful career. (Quotations are from The Pennsylvania Gazette, 11 November 1762.)
In 1763, Shippen invited the public to view human dissections at his Anatomical Theater. While Philadelphians were fascinated with dissection demonstrations, Shippen’s lectures also provoked shocking rumors that he had procured desecrated corpses from grave robbers. This lecture will interrogate the problematic boundaries between the deceased body as a sacred relic, a medical educational tool, and the object of titillating bodily spectatorship. As the controversies over current exhibitions like "Body Worlds" indicate, debates over the propriety of dissected human bodies on public display remain unresolved.
This is the second lecture in a series highlighting Pennsylvania Hospital's exhibition, "From Pastels to PDA’s: Medical Education from the 18th to the 21st Century." Susan Brandt is a Family Nurse Practitioner and Temple University doctoral student in History.