What a piece of work is man, as Hamlet said. Since ancient times, we've been fascinated by the mechanics of our bodies, the secret structures and networks beneath our skins. The anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci show how this interest has continued over time.
And today, with the German showman-anatomist Gunther von Hagens dissecting cadavers before our eyes, and television companies scrutinising ever-more-outlandish surgical procedures, public fascination is stronger than ever.
A partnership project led by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh is aiming to find new ways of revealing the marvels of anatomy to the public. But the organisers of Scotland and Medicine insist that they are eschewing sensationalism in favour of an approach that is sober, respectful and even poetic.
The initiative centres on a touring exhibition, Anatomy Acts, which includes medical specimens, artefacts, photographs, drawings and paintings alongside contemporary art and poetry.
The exhibition includes about 170 items from at least 16 Scottish collections, ranging from a life-size papier-mache man to paintings of battlefield injuries and early ultrasound images. Anatomy Acts opened in Edinburgh last month, and will tour venues throughout Scotland until 2007.
The Scotland and Medicine partnership was launched in 2005 to coincide with the Quincentenary of the Royal College. Subtitled Collections and Connections, the project is aiming to promote Scotland's medical collections to local, national and international audiences.
It was established with £300,000 from the Scottish Executive's Regional Development Challenge Fund (RDCF), which is administered by the Scottish Museums Council (SMC). The RDCF was launched in 2003 'to develop the capacity and sustainability of the museum sector through active partnerships'.
Dawn Kemp, the director of heritage at the Royal College, was not slow to seize the opportunity. An audit of museums published in 2002 by the SMC had revealed that most medical material was held outside the national collections. 'We saw that neither the National Museums of Scotland nor any local authority museum held the most significant collections on health,' Kemp says.
Also, a lot of the medical collections were in universities, so public access was restricted. 'Recently, universities have become much more keen to promote their collections to local and international audiences and it seemed that we would be more effective if we became more closely linked,' Kemp adds. 'We also recognised that Scotland has a very important history, in worldwide terms, in the development of medicine - and it continues to punch above its weight.'
The Royal College was well placed to apply for RDCF funding. It had long been a pioneer of what Kemp calls the 'democratic intellect' in Scotland. Its Pathology Museum first opened to the public in 1832, based around the collection of Scottish surgeon Sir Charles Bell. In 1989, a new museum about the History of Surgery in Scotland was opened at Surgeon's Hall in an adjoining gallery.
One key partner is the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, whose medical collection was assembled by the 18th-century Scottish anatomist William Hunter. Other partners include the Scottish Borders Council and the National Library of Scotland.
On top of the RDCF funding, Kemp's team has secured £150,000 from various bodies including the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Scottish Arts Council and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; and sponsorship in kind from the Edinburgh College of Art and other organisations. The project was established on a three-year basis, but Kemp is keen to take it forward. Plans are already afoot for an exhibition on mental health, Mapping the Mind, in 2009.
As another way of promoting Scotland's medical collections to the public, Scotland and Medicine is also producing a series of leaflets. Each covers a different area of Scotland and will alert the public to local health events and permanent collections to which they have access.
'It's an ideal opportunity to explore new ways of informing people about health and, hopefully, improving doctor-patient communication,' Kemp says.
With these goals clearly in sight, she enlisted her curator of choice, Andrew Patrizio. A lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art since 1997, Patrizio previously held posts at the Hayward Gallery in London and at Glasgow Museums. As well as bringing curatorial and educational experience to the project, his background in contemporary art enabled him to approach it in an unorthodox and original way.
'I tried to think of anatomy from a broader cultural perspective,' Patrizio explains. 'All my favourite projects are when different modes and discourses clash. Art and anatomy is a great example of that - it's so rich. I've been quite intuitive about it: if it interested me, it might interest other people.'
Anatomy Acts includes Sir Charles Bell's paintings of Napoleonic battlefield wounds and works by the Dutch anatomical illustrator Jan van Rymsdyk. Although these were created as teaching aids, they also have artistic merit. Taking a lead from this, Patrizio and Kemp quickly agreed that commissioned work from contemporary artists would enhance the project.
The Scottish artist Christine Borland was an obvious choice: her work has long centred on biological and medical processes. Patrizio also enlisted the American sculptor Joel Fisher and the English artist Claude Heath.
Kemp says she was also interested in the 'language of the body' and this led to her to contact Kathleen Jamie, one of Scotland's leading poets.
Meanwhile, Patrizio has spent years looking through Scotland's medical collections for exhibits. On a brief visit to the Royal College's store, he showed me row upon row of glass specimen jars, preserved body parts, mouldings, waxworks, charts, drawings and paintings - even little jars containing the stomach contents of long-dead patients.
It may sound macabre - and indeed, Anatomy Acts could have been a grim and ghoulish experience. But Kemp and Patrizio resolved from the start to avoid that.
'It should be completely clear from the exhibition that this is not a sensationalist project,' Patrizio says. 'We've borrowed very few human specimens; and occasionally we've edited out work that we felt could have been misconstrued in that way.'
Patrizio's approach to structuring the exhibition eventually coalesced around a series of verbs: Growing and Forming; Looking and Listening; Feeling; Doubling; and Charting. 'Because people bring their own experience to it they'll create their own meanings,' he says. 'I really want to allow for that.'
He is careful not to demean the educational value of Gunther von Hagens' performances, but objects to the suggestion that he is an artist. 'He's a trained anatomist; that's his background - but he looks and dresses like Joseph Beuys [the influential German conceptual artist] and he stages these performances and arranges his specimens as art, so he's perceived as an artist.
That's the worrying thing, because I think there's no art - deep art, really interesting art - going on. He's a professional medical person trying to popularise his subject.'
But if suspicions remain about von Hagens' performances, one performer has been welcomed into the project. Michael Crumplin is a retired surgeon and an authority on the Napoleonic era. His two interests converged in a study of surgical practice during the Napoleonic Wars.
He has written a book on the subject, Men of Steel, and has also taken part in dramatic reconstructions for film and television - including the Hollywood swashbuckler Master and Commander. And he now gives talks and demonstrations - in period costume - to provide insights into surgical procedures before the advent of anaesthetics and antiseptics.
Crumplin, who gave a demonstration of early-19th-century surgery in May at Edinburgh's City Art Centre, also says that sensationalism is not the point. 'What I try to tell people is that war is the grim bit,' he says. 'The people who repaired the damage must not be regarded as gruesome.'
He is also keen to dispel myths, such as the idea that alcohol was used to deaden the senses of amputees. 'Alcohol made patients uncooperative and really was only given as a reviver,' he insists.
Crumplin says he tries to give people an idea of how amputation was carried out at speed, how arteries were taken up, the difficulties of sawing bone, the dangers of infection and so on. 'The biggest myth of all is that these surgeons were quacks or charlatans. They were often a lot more skilled than people think.'
Determined as the organisers are to be ethical and respectful, Anatomy Acts arrives at a time when new legislation is being introduced to govern the treatment of human tissue. The legal issues are complex, not least because different laws will apply in Scotland - and, as has long been the case, they will be more liberal.
For example, trainee surgeons will now be allowed to hone their skills on cadavers, while their English colleagues have to rely on drawings, models and demonstrations.
The changing legal situation has provided Kemp with a few headaches, but she is confident that the exhibition will satisfy all regulations. 'We don't want to shock anyone,' she maintains. 'Some people do get upset by the sight of human tissue and so on, and we want to warn them what to expect and say if it's not for them please don't come in.'
But she says they would be ill-advised to apply the lowest common denominator of sensitivity, because then none of this material would be open to the public at all, which would deprive them of a source of knowledge about their own bodies. 'There are astonishing and awesome things in these collections, and there's no reason why people shouldn't have access to them.'
It may exclude the squeamish, but for sturdier souls it's a chance to step inside and see ourselves as anatomists do.
Andrew Burnet is a freelance writer and editor based in Edinburgh
Anatomy Acts is at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until 9 July, then tours to Dundee, St Andrews, Inverness and Glasgow
www.scotlandandmedicine.com
And today, with the German showman-anatomist Gunther von Hagens dissecting cadavers before our eyes, and television companies scrutinising ever-more-outlandish surgical procedures, public fascination is stronger than ever.
A partnership project led by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh is aiming to find new ways of revealing the marvels of anatomy to the public. But the organisers of Scotland and Medicine insist that they are eschewing sensationalism in favour of an approach that is sober, respectful and even poetic.
The initiative centres on a touring exhibition, Anatomy Acts, which includes medical specimens, artefacts, photographs, drawings and paintings alongside contemporary art and poetry.
The exhibition includes about 170 items from at least 16 Scottish collections, ranging from a life-size papier-mache man to paintings of battlefield injuries and early ultrasound images. Anatomy Acts opened in Edinburgh last month, and will tour venues throughout Scotland until 2007.
The Scotland and Medicine partnership was launched in 2005 to coincide with the Quincentenary of the Royal College. Subtitled Collections and Connections, the project is aiming to promote Scotland's medical collections to local, national and international audiences.
It was established with £300,000 from the Scottish Executive's Regional Development Challenge Fund (RDCF), which is administered by the Scottish Museums Council (SMC). The RDCF was launched in 2003 'to develop the capacity and sustainability of the museum sector through active partnerships'.
Dawn Kemp, the director of heritage at the Royal College, was not slow to seize the opportunity. An audit of museums published in 2002 by the SMC had revealed that most medical material was held outside the national collections. 'We saw that neither the National Museums of Scotland nor any local authority museum held the most significant collections on health,' Kemp says.
Also, a lot of the medical collections were in universities, so public access was restricted. 'Recently, universities have become much more keen to promote their collections to local and international audiences and it seemed that we would be more effective if we became more closely linked,' Kemp adds. 'We also recognised that Scotland has a very important history, in worldwide terms, in the development of medicine - and it continues to punch above its weight.'
The Royal College was well placed to apply for RDCF funding. It had long been a pioneer of what Kemp calls the 'democratic intellect' in Scotland. Its Pathology Museum first opened to the public in 1832, based around the collection of Scottish surgeon Sir Charles Bell. In 1989, a new museum about the History of Surgery in Scotland was opened at Surgeon's Hall in an adjoining gallery.
One key partner is the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, whose medical collection was assembled by the 18th-century Scottish anatomist William Hunter. Other partners include the Scottish Borders Council and the National Library of Scotland.
On top of the RDCF funding, Kemp's team has secured £150,000 from various bodies including the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Scottish Arts Council and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; and sponsorship in kind from the Edinburgh College of Art and other organisations. The project was established on a three-year basis, but Kemp is keen to take it forward. Plans are already afoot for an exhibition on mental health, Mapping the Mind, in 2009.
As another way of promoting Scotland's medical collections to the public, Scotland and Medicine is also producing a series of leaflets. Each covers a different area of Scotland and will alert the public to local health events and permanent collections to which they have access.
'It's an ideal opportunity to explore new ways of informing people about health and, hopefully, improving doctor-patient communication,' Kemp says.
With these goals clearly in sight, she enlisted her curator of choice, Andrew Patrizio. A lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art since 1997, Patrizio previously held posts at the Hayward Gallery in London and at Glasgow Museums. As well as bringing curatorial and educational experience to the project, his background in contemporary art enabled him to approach it in an unorthodox and original way.
'I tried to think of anatomy from a broader cultural perspective,' Patrizio explains. 'All my favourite projects are when different modes and discourses clash. Art and anatomy is a great example of that - it's so rich. I've been quite intuitive about it: if it interested me, it might interest other people.'
Anatomy Acts includes Sir Charles Bell's paintings of Napoleonic battlefield wounds and works by the Dutch anatomical illustrator Jan van Rymsdyk. Although these were created as teaching aids, they also have artistic merit. Taking a lead from this, Patrizio and Kemp quickly agreed that commissioned work from contemporary artists would enhance the project.
The Scottish artist Christine Borland was an obvious choice: her work has long centred on biological and medical processes. Patrizio also enlisted the American sculptor Joel Fisher and the English artist Claude Heath.
Kemp says she was also interested in the 'language of the body' and this led to her to contact Kathleen Jamie, one of Scotland's leading poets.
Meanwhile, Patrizio has spent years looking through Scotland's medical collections for exhibits. On a brief visit to the Royal College's store, he showed me row upon row of glass specimen jars, preserved body parts, mouldings, waxworks, charts, drawings and paintings - even little jars containing the stomach contents of long-dead patients.
It may sound macabre - and indeed, Anatomy Acts could have been a grim and ghoulish experience. But Kemp and Patrizio resolved from the start to avoid that.
'It should be completely clear from the exhibition that this is not a sensationalist project,' Patrizio says. 'We've borrowed very few human specimens; and occasionally we've edited out work that we felt could have been misconstrued in that way.'
Patrizio's approach to structuring the exhibition eventually coalesced around a series of verbs: Growing and Forming; Looking and Listening; Feeling; Doubling; and Charting. 'Because people bring their own experience to it they'll create their own meanings,' he says. 'I really want to allow for that.'
He is careful not to demean the educational value of Gunther von Hagens' performances, but objects to the suggestion that he is an artist. 'He's a trained anatomist; that's his background - but he looks and dresses like Joseph Beuys [the influential German conceptual artist] and he stages these performances and arranges his specimens as art, so he's perceived as an artist.
That's the worrying thing, because I think there's no art - deep art, really interesting art - going on. He's a professional medical person trying to popularise his subject.'
But if suspicions remain about von Hagens' performances, one performer has been welcomed into the project. Michael Crumplin is a retired surgeon and an authority on the Napoleonic era. His two interests converged in a study of surgical practice during the Napoleonic Wars.
He has written a book on the subject, Men of Steel, and has also taken part in dramatic reconstructions for film and television - including the Hollywood swashbuckler Master and Commander. And he now gives talks and demonstrations - in period costume - to provide insights into surgical procedures before the advent of anaesthetics and antiseptics.
Crumplin, who gave a demonstration of early-19th-century surgery in May at Edinburgh's City Art Centre, also says that sensationalism is not the point. 'What I try to tell people is that war is the grim bit,' he says. 'The people who repaired the damage must not be regarded as gruesome.'
He is also keen to dispel myths, such as the idea that alcohol was used to deaden the senses of amputees. 'Alcohol made patients uncooperative and really was only given as a reviver,' he insists.
Crumplin says he tries to give people an idea of how amputation was carried out at speed, how arteries were taken up, the difficulties of sawing bone, the dangers of infection and so on. 'The biggest myth of all is that these surgeons were quacks or charlatans. They were often a lot more skilled than people think.'
Determined as the organisers are to be ethical and respectful, Anatomy Acts arrives at a time when new legislation is being introduced to govern the treatment of human tissue. The legal issues are complex, not least because different laws will apply in Scotland - and, as has long been the case, they will be more liberal.
For example, trainee surgeons will now be allowed to hone their skills on cadavers, while their English colleagues have to rely on drawings, models and demonstrations.
The changing legal situation has provided Kemp with a few headaches, but she is confident that the exhibition will satisfy all regulations. 'We don't want to shock anyone,' she maintains. 'Some people do get upset by the sight of human tissue and so on, and we want to warn them what to expect and say if it's not for them please don't come in.'
But she says they would be ill-advised to apply the lowest common denominator of sensitivity, because then none of this material would be open to the public at all, which would deprive them of a source of knowledge about their own bodies. 'There are astonishing and awesome things in these collections, and there's no reason why people shouldn't have access to them.'
It may exclude the squeamish, but for sturdier souls it's a chance to step inside and see ourselves as anatomists do.
Andrew Burnet is a freelance writer and editor based in Edinburgh
Anatomy Acts is at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until 9 July, then tours to Dundee, St Andrews, Inverness and Glasgow
www.scotlandandmedicine.com
