Before the Operation

François Sallé’s The Anatomy Class (1888, see fig. 1.1) focuses on a muscular ‘labouring’ body and provides important material for examining ideas of normality...

~The established consensus in contemporary culture about the value of exactitude and legibility played a central part in the making, interpreting and appreciation of painting. Indeed, this process was circular, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The modern mentality set great store by precision and the document; contemporary pictures scrupulously recorded the present...

~The Agnew Clinic (fig. 1) today hangs high on a wall in the foyer of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. The painting cannot be taken in all at once; approximately six feet high by eleven feet long, it is exceptionally large. What first attracts the eye is the white-clad figure standing in isolation in the foreground, left...