by Jon Lackman | 24 April 2009 | Books, Photography
In Slate, Barron H. Lerner reviews Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine, 1880-1930:
The photographs in the remarkable new book Dissection shocked me, even though I spent a year in anatomy class during medical school. Dissection includes dozens of images of late-19th- and early-20th-century medical students posing, often in comedic manners, with cadavers and skeletons—scenes that, from our modern eye, appear disrespectful and unprofessional. Most disturbing of all are photographs, bearing racist inscriptions, of white medical students dissecting African-American cadavers.
Dissection‘s compilers, John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson, a historian of medicine and a museum curator, respectively, strive to place the often-jarring images in their proper historical context. Still, one has to wonder if some type of apology to these unwitting participants is in order …
Warner believes that dissection was a “communal rite of passage” for medical students at the turn of the 20th century and the images served as a “professional coming-of-age narrative” … Although the photographs may appear inappropriate to us, Warner argues, they commemorate a bonding experience between student and cadaver.
