Historicising Surgery

Sex, Gender, Technology and the Surgical Imaginary

Bibliographic Data

ID12346606
AuthorsJulie Doyle (0000-0002-3769-4208, University of Brighton, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume17
Issue3
Pages341-359
Publication date2007-07-26
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Semiotics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-0330 • E-ISSN: 1470-1219
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10350330701448686
OpenAlexW2042490861
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited21

The anatomical body figures as a privileged site in the signification of sexual difference. This paper argues that the historical discourses and practices of surgery are implicated in this figuration of the body as composed of sexually differentiated anatomical parts. Through historical analysis of the institutional and discursive developments of British surgery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the paper demonstrates how surgeons promoted an anatomical view of the body as representative of scientific, empirical knowledge. During this period, surgeons were deemed of lower medical and social status than physicians because, unlike physicians, surgeons physically touched the patient's body and were not university trained. In order to gain medical authority, surgeons thus had to resignify their practices (which included dissection) and approach to the body as illustrative of scientific knowledge, worthy of gentlemen. In contrast to the medical orthodoxy of physicians who diagnosed disease through external symptoms, surgeons attributed disease to the internal, material structures of the body and advocated surgical intervention as a means of medical management. In doing so, the human body was reconceived as an anatomical form, comprised of different parts to which surgeons have privileged access and knowledge. As this view gained legitimacy over the course of the nineteenth century, understandings about sexual difference became anatomically, and hence surgically, legitimised. This paper thus argues that the practices and discourses of surgery, and the surgeons implicated in its development, are instrumental in the historical production and ongoing reproduction of anatomy as a site of sexual significance

Body of knowledge · Human body · Legitimacy · Medical education · Medical knowledge · Orthodoxy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Medicine · Medicine and Dermatology Studies History · Anatomy

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