Rethinking Medical Humanities by Rinaldo F. Canalis

Author:Rinaldo F. Canalis
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2022-11-21T15:08:13.570000+00:00

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deijman and the Social History of the Brain

Jorge A. Lazareff

nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse

Walt Whitman

During the 16th and 17th centuries, in Holland, professional guilds hired reputed artists to represent their senior members in group portraits. To this practice, we own paintings displaying the likes of syndics, drapers, civic militia guards, and anatomy professors. Of the latter group, Rembrandt van Rijn´s (1606–1669) two anatomy lessons are the better known. The first one, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholas Tulp, is the most famous. Rembrandt completed it in 1632. The Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons commissioned it to celebrate the appointment of Dr. Nicolas Pieterszoon (1593–1674), nicknamed “Tulp,” as the city’s “Praelector Chirurgie et Anatomie,” a position he held for twenty years. When Dr. Tulp announced his intention to retire, the city offered the job to Leiden’s Johannes van Horne (1621–1670). The University of Leiden made Dr. van Horne a counteroffer, and that is how Dr. Jan Deijman (1619–1666), the second choice, was nominated and served for thirteen years until his death. In 1656 Rembrandt portrayed him in his first public dissection at the Kleine Veshaal anatomy theater.1

In Holland, cities were allowed one event each year held in January so the winter cold would prevent the rapid putrefaction of the corpse. In the protestant European north, the event also had a penal and theological significance. The separation of body and soul is not a rapid process, and the physical mistreatment of the autopsy added a layer of punishment to the criminal.2 The lectures were held at the anatomy theater of the guild. The public and guild members who wanted to be present paid a fee. Deijman’s lecture attracted a large audience. The record shows that his anatomy lesson extended for three days and collected 187 guilds and 6 pennies. Guild members who wanted to be portrayed contributed to the painter’s remuneration.3

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman that we see today in the Amsterdam Museum is what is left after a fire in 1723 (Figure 1). The fire consumed the likes of seven guild members but preserved the figure of Dr. Deijman’s assistant, Dr. Gijsbert Calkoen (1621–1664) and spared the body of Joris Fonteijn. Of Dr. Deijman, we see the torso and the hands, but not the head. Joris Fonteijn’s body stretches on the dissection table at a perspective reminiscent of Andrea Mantegna’s (1431–1506) The Lamentation of Christ. Following the axis of the corpse, we reach the head that is over flexed, perhaps resting on a wooden block for the comfort of the lecturer.

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