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DATE TBD, 2026
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
In the 1600s, male surgeons started taking over women’s medicine. Once solely the domain of local midwives, it was eventually subsumed under the larger umbrella of academic medicine. This takeover was not a short transition, but a protracted transformation in which generations of male doctors used imagery, language, spectacle, and a branding to establish a new wing to their medical domain, convincing local leaders in government, other doctors, students, and even midwives and women themselves of their usefulness. In the midst of monster-birthing hoaxes, public arguments over so-called discoveries, stolen ideas, and infighting, man-midwives used art and design as one of their primary tools to make a mark in the burgeoning field. We will see how anatomical images, thought to be bastions of accuracy, often served the doctor more than the field and how to read images in historical context to see how artistic choices took anatomical images beyond scientific communication into marketing for man-midwives.
Cali Buckley is an art historian specializing in anatomical models and the history of medicine.
DATE TBD, 2026
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
In the 1600s, male surgeons started taking over women’s medicine. Once solely the domain of local midwives, it was eventually subsumed under the larger umbrella of academic medicine. This takeover was not a short transition, but a protracted transformation in which generations of male doctors used imagery, language, spectacle, and a branding to establish a new wing to their medical domain, convincing local leaders in government, other doctors, students, and even midwives and women themselves of their usefulness. In the midst of monster-birthing hoaxes, public arguments over so-called discoveries, stolen ideas, and infighting, man-midwives used art and design as one of their primary tools to make a mark in the burgeoning field. We will see how anatomical images, thought to be bastions of accuracy, often served the doctor more than the field and how to read images in historical context to see how artistic choices took anatomical images beyond scientific communication into marketing for man-midwives.
Cali Buckley is an art historian specializing in anatomical models and the history of medicine.