Pilgrim
11-07-2008, 05:34 PM
In the early-nineteenth century the lay press had been suspicious of continental wax anatomical figures; the Literary Gazette of 1825 claimed that one anatomy exhibition was “a pretence” for showing off a “filthy French figure”. French waxwork-makers produced erotic nudes as well as anatomical moulages, and when English exhibitors of anatomical waxworks described them, correctly, as “French”, or “Parisian”, they were probably intentionally, if misleadingly, hinting at continental naughtiness.
...
Most of those prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act (1857) were pornographers, and anatomy museums were probably tainted by association. Medical men, provoked by museum proprietors who belittled conventional remedies and abused the medical profession, claimed that museums disseminated “filthy” and “dirty” literature that promoted the sexual behaviour of which it purported to disapprove.
...
Obscenity laws enabled the medical profession to recommend prosecution of museums in an apparently disinterested manner, by claiming their advertisements contained “descriptions suggestive to the youthful imagination of the very evils they pretend to deplore” and that readers would be “contaminated by … this moral poison”, though London police and magistrates remained apparently unconcerned, despite an appeal to the new Metropolitan Commissioner of Police from the British Medical Association in 1869 to close down the West End anatomy museums.
...
The Obscene Publications Act was a powerful instrument for medical anti-quackery campaigners, because material deemed obscene if placed before a general audience was considered acceptable for professional men. In 1867, the Chief Justice had stated that: “A medical treatise, with illustrations necessary for the information of those whose education or information the work is intended, may, in a certain sense, be obscene, and yet not the subject for indictment; but it can never be that these prints can be exhibited for anyone, boys or girls, to see as they pass.” The police seized some of the Kahn's models and charged the museum's proprietors with “exhibiting certain indecent and demoralising representations for the purpose of gain”. Though the proprietors argued in the magistrates’ court that the museum “was of a scientific and medical character”, they retracted their “not guilty” pleas after the case was referred to the Queen's Bench, and the models were destroyed. Woodhead's museum, which had re-opened in Liverpool, was tolerated by the local Medical Reform Association, who in 1871 used it as a venue for examinations, but it was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in 1874, after it moved to Manchester. To Woodhead's justification “that the Royal College of Surgeons possesses, and admits the public to, an exhibition similar to his own”, the magistrate replied that “he could understand museums of the character of the defendant's being connected with the hospitals and medical colleges, but when they came into the hands of private individuals they were likely to produce serious evils”.
“Indecent and Demoralising Representations”: Public Anatomy Museums in mid-Victorian England (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2175054)
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Public anatomical exhibitions in nineteenth-century England
Sarti London: Margaret Street, Regent Street; Huddersfield; Boston (Lincolnshire) 1839–50, 1854
Kahn London: 315 Oxford Street; 232 Piccadilly; 4 Coventry St; 3 Titchborne Street 1851–72
Caplin 58 Berners Street, London 1851–63
Reimers Leicester Square, London 1852–3
Woodhead Sheffield; Liverpool; Manchester 1854–74
Marston 369 Oxford Street, London 1859–62
Hamilton 404 Oxford Street, London 1865–6
Harvey and Co. Hanover Square, London 1867
~~~
With the exception of French state medical education under Napoleon, teaching by means of anatomical models never proved popular with the medical profession as an alternative to dissection, probably because learning from books and models rather than from real bodies was considered the pis aller of unorthodox practitioners.
Anatomical Venuses: The Aesthetics of Anatomical Modelling in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe (http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:DbtTsoKelSQJ:www.ishm2006.hu/scientific/abstract.php%3FID%3D59+Anatomical+Venuses:+The+Aes thetics+of+Anatomical+Modelling+in+18th-+and+19th-Century+Europe&cd=1&hl=no&ct=clnk&gl=no&client=firefox-a)
~~~
Antoine Wiertz - Last Thoughts and Visions / (http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/wiertz.html)Bioephemera - Invading Hands & Sleeping Beauties (http://bioephemera.com/2007/11/24/invading-hands-sleeping-beauties/)
...
Most of those prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act (1857) were pornographers, and anatomy museums were probably tainted by association. Medical men, provoked by museum proprietors who belittled conventional remedies and abused the medical profession, claimed that museums disseminated “filthy” and “dirty” literature that promoted the sexual behaviour of which it purported to disapprove.
...
Obscenity laws enabled the medical profession to recommend prosecution of museums in an apparently disinterested manner, by claiming their advertisements contained “descriptions suggestive to the youthful imagination of the very evils they pretend to deplore” and that readers would be “contaminated by … this moral poison”, though London police and magistrates remained apparently unconcerned, despite an appeal to the new Metropolitan Commissioner of Police from the British Medical Association in 1869 to close down the West End anatomy museums.
...
The Obscene Publications Act was a powerful instrument for medical anti-quackery campaigners, because material deemed obscene if placed before a general audience was considered acceptable for professional men. In 1867, the Chief Justice had stated that: “A medical treatise, with illustrations necessary for the information of those whose education or information the work is intended, may, in a certain sense, be obscene, and yet not the subject for indictment; but it can never be that these prints can be exhibited for anyone, boys or girls, to see as they pass.” The police seized some of the Kahn's models and charged the museum's proprietors with “exhibiting certain indecent and demoralising representations for the purpose of gain”. Though the proprietors argued in the magistrates’ court that the museum “was of a scientific and medical character”, they retracted their “not guilty” pleas after the case was referred to the Queen's Bench, and the models were destroyed. Woodhead's museum, which had re-opened in Liverpool, was tolerated by the local Medical Reform Association, who in 1871 used it as a venue for examinations, but it was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in 1874, after it moved to Manchester. To Woodhead's justification “that the Royal College of Surgeons possesses, and admits the public to, an exhibition similar to his own”, the magistrate replied that “he could understand museums of the character of the defendant's being connected with the hospitals and medical colleges, but when they came into the hands of private individuals they were likely to produce serious evils”.
“Indecent and Demoralising Representations”: Public Anatomy Museums in mid-Victorian England (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2175054)
~~~
Public anatomical exhibitions in nineteenth-century England
Sarti London: Margaret Street, Regent Street; Huddersfield; Boston (Lincolnshire) 1839–50, 1854
Kahn London: 315 Oxford Street; 232 Piccadilly; 4 Coventry St; 3 Titchborne Street 1851–72
Caplin 58 Berners Street, London 1851–63
Reimers Leicester Square, London 1852–3
Woodhead Sheffield; Liverpool; Manchester 1854–74
Marston 369 Oxford Street, London 1859–62
Hamilton 404 Oxford Street, London 1865–6
Harvey and Co. Hanover Square, London 1867
~~~
With the exception of French state medical education under Napoleon, teaching by means of anatomical models never proved popular with the medical profession as an alternative to dissection, probably because learning from books and models rather than from real bodies was considered the pis aller of unorthodox practitioners.
Anatomical Venuses: The Aesthetics of Anatomical Modelling in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe (http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:DbtTsoKelSQJ:www.ishm2006.hu/scientific/abstract.php%3FID%3D59+Anatomical+Venuses:+The+Aes thetics+of+Anatomical+Modelling+in+18th-+and+19th-Century+Europe&cd=1&hl=no&ct=clnk&gl=no&client=firefox-a)
~~~
Antoine Wiertz - Last Thoughts and Visions / (http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/wiertz.html)Bioephemera - Invading Hands & Sleeping Beauties (http://bioephemera.com/2007/11/24/invading-hands-sleeping-beauties/)