From Allegory to Emblem: Uncovering the Brain in Lorenz Fries’ Spiegel der Artzney and Hans von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundartzney
Open Access
- Author:
- Kismet Bell, Jameson Bradley
- Graduate Program:
- German
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 04, 2011
- Committee Members:
- Daniel Leonhard Purdy, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Daniel Leonhard Purdy, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Michael Hagner, Committee Member
Joan Landes, Committee Member
Dennis Schmidt, Committee Member
Barry Richard Page Jr., Committee Member - Keywords:
- History of Medicine
History of Surgery
History of the Brain
Renaissance Epistemology
Art History
Visualization
Performance Studies
Ventricle Theory
Lorenz Fries
Hans von Gersdorff
Inner Senses
German Literature - Abstract:
- This dissertation attempts to understand the diverse signs used to present the brain in medical doctor Lorenz Fries’ Mirror of Medicine (1518) and surgeon Hans von Gersdorff’s Fieldbook of Surgery (1517). In the history of the brain, the pre-Vesalian period between the turn of the 16th century and 1543 has either been denigrated for its medieval emphasis on the antiquated theory of the inner senses and symbolic images or praised for its more modern use of the techniques of dissection and visually accurate representations. Texts like the Mirror of Medicine and Fieldbook of Surgery, however, present the brain through the inner senses, dissection and visually accurate images. In order to account for these diverse presentations, I use theories of allegory and emblem to explain the simultaneous presence of multiple epistemic styles. In addition to this unique approach that uses allegory and emblem to explore the history of medicine, surgery, and the brain, I provide evidence that questions the historical emphasis on Fries’ and denigration of Gersdorff’s text while offering a fruitful method of understanding knowledge forms in medicine and surgery in the early 16th Century. I show that a medieval allegorical thought style classified signs within a hierarchy of knowledge that moved through the hierarchically ordered signifying structures of gesture, image, and word, each separating the subject by degrees from the ideal object knowable in one’s intellectual faculty. Prior to the 16th Century, the proper performance of the inner senses of common sense, imagination, reason and memory helped the intellect use these faculties to bridge the gap between thought and object and can be seen in Fries’ allegorical medieval medicine. Gersdorff’s surgical manual, however, teaches by moving between the equally valuable domains of speech, writing and print, images and gestures, thereby relating fragmented signs emblematically. Four main chapters explore the performativity and theatricality of words, images, and gestures that represent the brain in the early 16th Century. After an introduction to the authors, texts, and milieu, The Inner Senses: from Allegory to Emblem provides the theoretical foundation for the use of allegory and emblem to understand the performativity and theatricality of knowledge of the brain found in Fries and Gersdroff’s texts. Knowing the Brain in the Early 16th Century explores medical and surgical discourses and the performative aspects of diagnosis, treatment, and proper performance of the inner senses whereby doctor, surgeon, and patient moved through common sense, imagination, reason, and memory. The Theatricality of the Head and Brain in the Early 16th Century argues that in the 16th Century, the brain did not yet exist as an isolated object but should be understood in a conceptual relationship to the allegory of the head. Finally, The Brain as Emblem provides an emblematic reading of the oft-ignored fugitive sheet in Gersdorff’s text and demonstrates an alternate future to the brain’s fragmentary and enigmatic construction that influences late 16th Century cerebral anatomy as well as Philip Melanchthon’s Protestant education reforms.