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The Truth about Our Bones: William Cheselden's Osteographia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Allister Neher
Allister Neher
Affiliation:
Dr. Allister Neher, Humanities Department, Dawson College, Montreal, Quebec H3Z 1A4, Canada; e-mail: aneher@dawsoncollege.qc.ca
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Abstract

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Type
Short Articles
Information
Medical History , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 517 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2010. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 William Cheselden, Osteographia, or the anatomy of the bones, London, W Bowyer, 1733.

2 In the images he created for Osteographia, Cheselden developed a mixed method of printing, using etching as well as line engraving, in order to create more complex textures. “The expressing of the smoothness of the ends of the bones by engraving with only single lines, while the other parts were all etched, was also my contriving” (‘To The Reader’, unpaged). In etching, an image is drawn on a metal plate that is covered by an acid-resistant wax. The plate is then dipped in acid and where the wax has been removed the acid eats into the plate and creates lines.

3 Gerard van der Gucht and Jacob Schijnvoet were two Dutch artists working in London. For more information on Schijnvoet, see William Le Fanu, ‘Anatomical drawings by Jacobus Schijnvoet’, Oud Holland, 1960, 75: 54–8.

4 Cheselden, op. cit., note 1 above, ‘To The Reader’, unpaged.

5 Martin Kemp, ‘Temples of the body and temples of the Cosmos: vision and visualization in the Vesalian and Copernican revolutions’, in Brian S Baigrie (ed.), Picturing knowledge: historical and philosophical problems concerning the use of art in science, University of Toronto Press, 1996, pp. 40–85. See also Martin Kemp, “‘The mark of truth”: looking and learning in some anatomical illustrations from the Renaissance and eighteenth century’, in W F Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), Medicine and the five senses, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 85–121.

6 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, New York, Zone Books, 2007, pp. 19–26.

7 Ibid., pp. 55–113. See also Claudia Swan, ‘Ad vivum, naer het leven, from the life: considerations on a mode of representation’, Word and Image, 1995, 11: 353–72.

8 Cheselden also put a camera obscura on the title-page of his Anatomy of the human body, 13th ed., London, J Dodsley, et al., 1792.

9 Mark A Sanders, ‘Historical perspective: William Cheselden: anatomist, surgeon, and medical illustrator’, Spine, 1 Nov. 1999, 24 (21): 2282.

10 I have learned in conversation with Annette Wickham (10 January 2009), research curator for works on paper at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, that it is their assessment as well that Cheselden did not do the drawings.

11 William T Whitley, Artists and their friends in England, 1700–1799, 2 vols, New York, B Blom, 1968, vol. 1, p. 17.

12 Sir Zachary Cope, William Cheselden 1688–1752, Edinburgh and London, E & S Livingstone, 1953, p. 67.

13 Cheselden, ‘To The Reader’, unpaged.

14 The unique copy of this item is in the Hunterian Library, University of Glasgow.

15 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Nov. 1733, 38 (430): 196. All the punctuation and spelling is as it is in the original passage.

16 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the observer, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1990, and Don Ihde, ‘Epistemology engines’, Nature, 6 July 2000, 406: 21.

17 John Locke, Essay on human understanding, abridged and edited by A S Pringle-Pattison, Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 91. The emphasis is Locke's.

18 To mention only two examples, Locke was a student of Thomas Willis when Christopher Wren was working with Willis and he was familiar with Wren's explorations in astronomy; Locke was also close to Robert Boyle and his principal assistant Robert Hooke, the author of Micrographia. For further discussions of Locke's scientific and medical background, see Maurice Cranston, John Locke, a biography, New York, Macmillan, 1957; Kenneth Dewhurst, John Locke, 1632–1704, physician and philosopher: a medical biography, London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1963; Patrick Romanell, John Locke and medicine: a new key to Locke, Buffalo, NY, Prometheus Books, 1984. Locke maintained an interest in optical instruments, as can be seen in his journals and correspondence from his visits to France, where he always sought out famous instrument makers. See John Locke, Locke's travels in France, 1675–1679, as related in his journals, correspondence and other papers, ed. and intro. by John Lough, Cambridge University Press, 1953.

19 I am using the term “contour line” instead of “outline” because contour lines attempt to suggest volume, three- dimensionality.

20 Royal Academy of Arts (Cab. B/ Box 14, 03/6826). One drawback to using a camera obscura is that the image has a central area of focus and as one moves away from it the image becomes less distinct. This would not have provided a problem for Cheselden because the specimens, even the entire skeleton torso, were small enough to remain in the area of focus.

21 Locke, op. cit., note 17 above, p. 228.

22 Ibid., p. 230.

23 For example, Cheselden was the first president of the Royal College of Surgeons and yet there is only one original document in their archives directly related to him: the deed of sale of the copyright for Cheselden's Anatomy of the human body to the publishers, Charles Hitch and Robert Dodsley for £200, dated 8 April 1749. Signed and sealed by William Cheselden, witnessed by James Dodsley.

24 Cheselden became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1712, twenty-one years before the publication of Osteographia. Not only was Locke popular at the Royal Society, the Essay was probably the second most widely read book in England after the Bible. See Kenneth MacLean, John Locke and English literature of the eighteenth century, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1936.

25 Carol Gibson-Wood, Jonathan Richardson: art theorist of the English Enlightenment, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 78–80.

26 William Cheselden, ‘An account of some observations made by a young gentleman, who was born blind, or lost his sight so early, that he had no remembrance of ever having seen, and was couch'd between 13 and 14 years of age’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1727–1728, 35 (402): 447–52.

27 Locke, op. cit., note 17 above, pp. 75–6.

28 Cheselden, op. cit., note 26 above, p. 448.