The Courtiers’ Anatomists

Through a close study of anatomical practices in seventeenth-century Paris, Anita Guerrini has accomplished the tour de force of bringing epistemological dignity to the scientific culture of the court. Her book opens with a description of the Paris of the anatomists and the local characteristics of a professional world spread across different institutions (hospitals, the Faculty of Medicine, the royal college, the king’s garden and the Academy of Science). The first chapter discusses the relations between anatomists and courtiers. In the late sixteenth century, anatomy teachers had begun using bodies from the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents between Rue de la Ferronerie and Rue Saint-Denis on the right bank of the Seine. However, most dissection in the seventeenth century was done on animals, primarily dogs, cats and pigs. An employee of the Académie des Sciences had the job of collecting these from the Châtelet, the inner courtyard of which served as a morgue, while others came from the Hôtel-Dieu. The Faculty of Medicine did not open its anatomy theatre until 1620, subsequently becoming responsible for the administration of corpses. A geography of supply sites then developed, initially located in central Paris but gradually moving to the periphery with the cemeteries in Clamart and Saint-Denis

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