Balancing acts: Picturing perspiration in the long eighteenth century
- 作者：Lucia Dacome lucia.dacome@utoronto.edu
- 关键词：Santorio Santorio ; Static medicine ; Weight-watching ; Insensible perspiration ; Dietetics ; Images ; Copies ; Masculinity ; Solitude ; Sociability ; Experimental culture
- 刊名：Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C ; Biological and Biomedical Sciences
- 出版年：2012
- 期刊代码：113_13698486
- 类别：soc
- 出版时间：June, 2012
- 卷：43
- 期：2
- 页码：379-391
- 文件大小：2531 K
摘要
This essay examines the historical fortunes of an image that throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became a landmark of the medical doctrine and practice of static medicine advanced by the physician . The image depicted a man sitting on a large Roman steelyard, which allowed the weighing of bodily discharges and gave guidance on the intake of food. Well into the eighteenth century, the image of the weight-watching man accompanied Santorio鈥檚 work on the art of static medicine and, most likely, contributed to its success. It appeared in a variety of medical works and navigated across competing medical theories and different medical genres, while remaining largely unscathed. This essay explores the success and the historical agency of this image. Focusing on the history of its copies and variants, it investigates how the image came to symbolize the attempt to transform dietetics into an experimental practice, and accordingly preserve its pivotal significance in the medical world.