Dissected limbs and the integral body: on anatomical wax models and medical moulages

Abstract

Scientific images come in three dimensions as well as two, and medical imagery is no exception. A comparison of anatomical wax models of the eighteenth century on the one hand, with medical wax casts (so called ‘moulages’) from the period 1850–1950 on the other, shows how the interplay of a number of factors rendered one representational technique obsolete and gave rise to another. Changing ethical and religious priorities around the human body, as well as new diagnostic and didactic requirements within medicine itself, led to the rejection of normative, idealised visualisations of the human form and body parts, and towards painstakingly detailed portrayals in wax of individual patients with distinct diseases.