British Studies Colloquium: Meredith Gamer, Columbia University

‘With utmost delicacy and tenderest care:’ William Hunter’s maternal-fetal bodiesMeredith GamerAbstract:The plates of William Hunter’s pioneering obstetrical atlas, The Anatomy of the Human GravidUterus (1774), are among the most famous images in the history of medicine. Yet despite thisfact—and, in some ways, because of it—they remain little understood. In part, this is becausescholars have tended to treat them selectively, focusing on just a few rather than consideringthem as a collective whole. And in part, it is because their style deflects interpretation, invitingus to believe that what we are seeing is nothing more or less than “nature” itself. This lectureoffers a new reading of Hunter’s book by reconstructing the history of its making, and byattending closely to the intellectual, social, and cultural world from which it emerged. Above all,I suggest, the meaning of the Anatomy’s plates lies in their depiction of maternal-fetalconnection. Through their nuanced and sensitive depiction of bodies, membranes, vessels, andfluids, they visualize a kind of intimacy that eighteenth-century viewers had never seen before,and that we risk losing sight of today.