Picturing Medical Histories: 'Ways of Seeing' the Historical Medical Subject

Abstract

Abstract: The image has been used by medical professionals for centuries to illustrate both usual and unusual processes of the body and mind. Images can expose or conceal medical truths, and in many cases are the only connection that exists between the historian and the frequently silent or silenced patient. In this paper, a group of historians each present and explore various methods of applying 'ways of seeing ' or the 'clinical gaze' to a historical image from the medical world. Some images have been used to strategically serve the purposes of authority figures and silence the ill subject. Others reveal previously obscured patient's voices. All present a perspective on the possibilities for analysing and assessing medical imagery from the past that moves beyond traditional understandings.