Women and Anatomy Education in Enlightenment France

Bibliographic Data

ID8940530
AuthorsMargaret Carlyle (0000-0002-4950-2437, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume48
Issue2
Pages191-219
Publication date2025-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrench Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-1071 • E-ISSN: 1527-5493
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00161071-11626753
OpenAlexW4410878238
LanguageEN
References cited35

This article examines the gap between the aspirational goals of eighteenth-century anatomy as a discipline meant to enfranchise women and the complex realities of their engagement with the subject, which elicited both admiration and fear. New materials in medical education, such as wax models and real skeletons, were perceived as both liberating tools and sources of moral anxiety. Women's interactions with these models and the anatomical knowledge they represented were often accepted and even celebrated when presented in an amateur context and under expert supervision. However, they were seen as troubling when consumed independently or in subversive settings. This tension culminated in a late-century backlash against mixed-gender visits to anatomical waxwork museums

Enlightenment · Epistemology · Political science · Anatomy · Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Medical History and Research · Medicine · Philosophy