Dissection in Classical Antiquity: A Social and Medical History - Hardcover

Bubb, Claire

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 100915947X ISBN 13: 9781009159470

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2023

Synopsis

Dissection is a practice with a long history stretching back to antiquity and has played a crucial role in the development of anatomical knowledge. This absorbing book takes the story back to classical antiquity, employing a wide range of textual and material evidence. Claire Bubb reveals how dissection was practised from the Hippocratic authors of the fifth century BC through Aristotle and the Hellenistic doctors Herophilus and Erasistratus to Galen in the second century AD. She focuses on its material concerns and social contexts, from the anatomical subjects (animal or human) and how they were acquired, to the motivations and audiences of dissection, to its place in the web of social contexts that informed its reception, including butchery, sacrifice, and spectacle. The book concludes with a thorough examination of the relationship of dissection to the development of anatomical literature into Late Antiquity.

About this title

About the Author

Claire Bubb is an Assistant Professor of Classical Literature and Science at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 100915947X
• ISBN 13: 9781009159470
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 412