Signe Nipper Nielsen (PhD candidate, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge)
The crossing of boundaries and the confines of the human body in 17th century concepts of generation
17th century medicine and natural philosophy took
a deep interest in human generation. This also applied to anatomist and
natural historian Thomas Bartholin (1616-1680), professor at the
University of Copenhagen. In his natural observations he was mainly
preoccupied with the extraordinary and curious, and in his many cases
concerning human procreation, the unpredictable and strange aspects of
the processes of generation and the playfulness and creativity of
nature stood out. Bartholin reported on women who gave birth to hens’
eggs, rat-like creatures, strange monstrous births and fleshy masses
taking shape of trees, bizarre faces, mushrooms and toads. Animals or
animal-like images were also reported to breed in men’s bodies, and a
foetus had ostensibly been pregnant with another foetus.
It is these transgressions of categories together with the confines of the human body that I will explore in this paper. The products of generation in the 17th century were thought to be able to take entirely different and unpredictable shapes and cross the boundaries between humans and animals, the different natural kingdoms, the sexes and the inside and outside. This continuous crossing of boundaries must be understood together with the early modern concept of Nature. Nature was transformative; it was ingenious, playful and volatile and inclined towards generating one thing out of another. These were essential principles in early modern natural history and Bartholin’s investigations in Nature were no exception. When he compared the unborn child with a walnut, when he let a girl be fathered by a dog, or a goat give birth to a human being, categories were obstructed and Nature’s playfulness accentuated.
Signe Nipper Nielsen is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She works on changing concepts of generation in Danish natural philosophy and medicine 1650-1800, particularly with ways in which foetuses and other ‘products of generation’ were represented in medical literature, illustrations and practices of collecting, dissecting and displaying specimens, and how these representations related to changing concepts of nature.
She holds a BA in History and Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, an MA in Social History and Women’s Studies from Lancaster University and a cand.mag. (MA) in History from the University of Copenhagen.
It is these transgressions of categories together with the confines of the human body that I will explore in this paper. The products of generation in the 17th century were thought to be able to take entirely different and unpredictable shapes and cross the boundaries between humans and animals, the different natural kingdoms, the sexes and the inside and outside. This continuous crossing of boundaries must be understood together with the early modern concept of Nature. Nature was transformative; it was ingenious, playful and volatile and inclined towards generating one thing out of another. These were essential principles in early modern natural history and Bartholin’s investigations in Nature were no exception. When he compared the unborn child with a walnut, when he let a girl be fathered by a dog, or a goat give birth to a human being, categories were obstructed and Nature’s playfulness accentuated.
Signe Nipper Nielsen is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She works on changing concepts of generation in Danish natural philosophy and medicine 1650-1800, particularly with ways in which foetuses and other ‘products of generation’ were represented in medical literature, illustrations and practices of collecting, dissecting and displaying specimens, and how these representations related to changing concepts of nature.
She holds a BA in History and Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, an MA in Social History and Women’s Studies from Lancaster University and a cand.mag. (MA) in History from the University of Copenhagen.
