Visual Translations: Medicine, Art, China and the West

In the history of medicine, relatively little attention has been paid to the way medical illustration circulated globally-or to the issues raised by the cultural "translation'' of such images. My goal here is to flesh out some of the history of this circulation and translation by exploring the aesthetic and medical connections between two specific anatomical collections, both housed at the Gordon Pathology Museum at Guy's Hospital, London. The Joseph Towne collection of anatomical waxes and the Lam Qua paintings of the patients of medical missionary Peter Parker were both produced in the nineteenth century. Significantly, the two collections were part of related but culturally specific shifts in the way bodies (and diseased bodies) were viewed, represented, understood and treated. I explore some of the convergences and divergences between Western and Chinese medical and artistic priorities and will address some of the issues raised by them. These two collections are important, I argue, because they demonstrate how aesthetic considerations shape medical knowledge and wider attitudes about the human body.