Anita Guerrini’s The Courtiers’ Anatomists is a well-written text that pulls its readers into the intersection of animal and human dissection and vivisection in the context Louis XIV’s Paris. The central theme is that of dissection and experimental methods employed by the courtiers’ anatomists. Dr. Guerrini obtained her Ph.D. from Indiana University, specializing in the history and philosophy of science. Some of her works include “Duverney’s Skeletons,” “The King’s Animals and the King’s Books: The Illustrations for the Paris Academy’s Histoire des animaux,” and Experimenting with Humans and Animals from Aristotle to CRISPR. For The Courtiers’ Anatomists, Dr. Guerrini was awarded the Pfizer Prize in 2018. Guerrini’s writing style in The Courtiers’ Anatomists merges history and philosophy with science, creating a space where the focus is on the accomplishments of the anatomists rather than on the rule of Louis XIV.
The Courtiers’ Anatomists is succinctly laid out, with an introduction, chapters with headings and subheadings, a conclusion, and an epilogue. The introduction lays the groundwork for later chapters in the book. It is clear and concise in terms of what the book is about and where it is positioned in history. The themes of dissection and vivisection of animals, as well as the intersection of anatomy and natural history, are introduced, as they are prominent throughout the book. Chapter One begins with Guerrini painting a lurid picture of how corpses were exhumed for dissection by “resurrection men” employed by the prominent anatomists of the day. Corpses were a commodity, as medical students, surgeons, and anatomists all needed a fresh supply. One must also understand the historical context of Paris at the time, as the anatomists also obtained living specimens from the streets, typically stray dogs. As the author transitions to Chapter Two, the discovery of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey in the 1620s and the discovery of so-called “lacteal veins” by a Milanese doctor named Aselli take center stage. Aselli believed that these veins ended at the liver, where, according to the Galenic view prevalent in medicine at the time, blood was generated. Thomas Bartholin, an early French anatomist, concluded that these “lacteal veins” were part of the lymphatic system. Chapter Three explores the anatomical projects and the primary anatomists of the Paris Academy. It opens with a foray into blood transfusion, which was done on dogs through vivisection and was ultimately unsuccessful. The fact that the body would attack the wrong kind of transfused blood, something modern medicine takes for granted, was unknown in the seventeenth century. Guerrini surfaces a counternarrative of the ongoing philosophical debates surrounding animals. Descartes believed that animals were like machines, driven only by instinct. Humans, however, were believed to be free actors, shaping their own destinies. Emotion was believed to be uniquely human, as was the afterlife. In sharp contrast to Descartes’ view, Marin Cureau de la Chambre, a Parisian anatomist, broke with centuries of tradition by stating that the ability to feel pain was a conscious act. He believed that animals had souls, emotions, and the ability to choose between good and evil. In Chapter Four, the reader is introduced to the first “exotic” dissections at the Academy, with the king’s menagerie as a source of “exotic” animals. It also brings up the publication of the Histoire des animaux, an illustrated atlas of animals from around the world. Chapter Five continues the thread of exotic dissections, bringing in the royal menagerie from which the anatomists obtained their specimens. The anatomists were given a chameleon to experiment on, and they shattered several longstanding beliefs about the species. When they wrapped the chameleon in a tablecloth, it became pale but not white, showing that chameleons do not change color automatically. In Chapter Six, the focus is on how Duverney lectured at the Jardin du Roi to paying audiences, often conducting vivisections or dissections in front of court ladies and city financiers. In 1694, Claude Perrault’s brother Charles published his interpretations of classic fairy tales, some of which later inspired Disney movies, such as his retelling of Cinderella. In that story, the interchangeable nature of humans and animals was in direct parallel to what was going on in the anatomists’ lectures. Animals stood in for humans as test subjects, as exhuming human remains was fraught with cultural issues. However, Perrault’s fairy tales also had a cruel undertone: his retelling of Little Red Riding Hood had the wolf eat both the girl and her grandmother. Duverney and the other anatomists knew that the animals they were experimenting on were in pain, but that did not hinder their quest for knowledge. As the author transitions to the conclusion, she points out that the Paris Academy was dependent on the goodwill of the crown. When Louis XIV lost interest in the anatomists’ project, he terminated the supply of animals from the royal menagerie. The epilogue deals with the legacy of the Histoire des animaux in the eighteenth century. Guerrini states that the Histoire des animaux occupies a place in history between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
The author is explicit in her introduction about the goals of her book. Guerrini’s primary themes are the anatomists, animals and natural history, and the interrelationship of dissection, vivisection, experience, and experiment. When focusing on the anatomists, Guerrini relates their role to that of the courtiers and the monarchy. The anatomists were dependent on royal funds, and the whims of the king often terminated projects, such as the menagerie dissections. Guerrini relates an anecdote about a time when the patronage of Louis XIV’s advisor Colbert meant that cats were unable to be experimented on, as Colbert was an avid cat fancier. Patronage was a palpable exertion of royal power. Guerrini also writes about dissection’s role as a form of seventeenth-century innovation. Dissection was at the forefront of seventeenth-century medical knowledge, showing doctors what the inside of the body looked like long before X-rays and ultrasound technology. However, dissection did nothing to quell the popularity of bloodletting, which was still seen as beneficial well into the nineteenth century. The theme of animals and natural history is another major part of the narrative. Anatomy and natural history intersected in many ways in the seventeenth century, and the Histoire des animaux depicted animals both in life and in dissected form. The book showed how the dissection of animals sparked an interest in natural history amongst scientists of the time period, as can be seen in the epilogue. The dichotomies of dissection and vivisection, experience and experiment, are also prominent in The Courtiers’ Anatomists. The educated public paid to see these dissections and vivisections, which were often accompanied by the lectures of the anatomists themselves. The curiosity of both the anatomists and the educated public was fueled by a deep-seated desire to know everything about the world around them.
The Courtiers’ Anatomists was a thorough and thoughtful account of a lesser-known chapter in scientific history, which could appeal both to historians and to individuals in the medical field. I would recommend this book to historians seeking a deeper understanding of the world of Louis XIV and how science played into the Age of Absolutism. From a different perspective, I would recommend this book to those in the medical field who want to explore how the dissections and vivisections of this time period paved the way for modern medicine.
