Resurrecting the 'Nature of a Child' : Hippocrates, Mark 5:20, and the Anatomical Renderings of Frederik Ruysch
Jessica Shand, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics , University of Rochester Medical Center
Advances in maternal and child health have reduced child mortality from a common historical experience to a less frequent tragedy. With this substantial shift in experience, the death of a child in the medical setting can cause significant moral and emotional distress. Physicians and chaplains often express that there is little in their education that prepares them for this difficult reality.
How do we regard the diseased bodies of children, in belief and in practice? The answer is rarely addressed in medical or pastoral care curricula, yet is critical for the professional formation of any who attend to the suffering of children. In this paper, I present the concept for an interdisciplinary medical humanities course examining the Hippocratic foundation for, and potential theological contexts of, the pediatric anatomical compositions of 17th century Netherlandish scientist Frederik Ruysch.
Hippocrates’ treatise The Nature of the Child describes, in remarkable detail, anatomical features of the human fetus at various stages of development. In it, he attempts to establish causality between the articulation of fetal anatomical features and the constitutional attributes of the mother. For Hippocrates, the study of the developing child was a study of natural order, a lens through which to relate cause and effect. Over a millennium later, against the backdrop of the Vanitas art tradition, anatomist Frederik Ruysch took the anatomical study of children in a bold and unprecedented direction. Using meticulously tested preparations, Ruysch carefully preserved bony and vascular structures, embellished them with floral arrangements, and assembled them in increasingly complex tableaux displays. In each composition, Ruysch infused his anatomical memento mori with the innocence, liveliness and even humor of children to remind the viewer that the body serves as a temporary structure for the eternal soul. Though aesthetically challenging to contemporary tastes, the study of Ruysch requires us to consider deeply what the life and death of a child represents.
Ruysch was quite outspoken that his methods served to honor “the miracles of God Almighty.” When parents pray for a miracle at the bedside of a dying child, they often pray for a restoration of the child’s previously health state- as Jesus did when he restored life to the sick daughter of Jairus in the Gospel of Mark (5:20). If we limit our interpretation of Jairus’ daughter’s resurrection to the purely physical, I argue, we lose an opportunity to consider what hope remains when death is inevitable. Ruysch’s compositions allow us to consider the resurrection of the soul in the glaring presence of physical death.
The course that explores these themes will be offered both to medical and seminary students, with features of both a traditional cross-listed course and an innovative digital platform. Students will critically engage the Hippocratic tradition described in The Nature of a Child, consider how Ruysch’s work both continued and diverged from that tradition, and bring into dialogue anatomists’ resurrected children and the story of Jairus’ daughter to reframe our approach to grief and hope around the death of a child.
How do we regard the diseased bodies of children, in belief and in practice? The answer is rarely addressed in medical or pastoral care curricula, yet is critical for the professional formation of any who attend to the suffering of children. In this paper, I present the concept for an interdisciplinary medical humanities course examining the Hippocratic foundation for, and potential theological contexts of, the pediatric anatomical compositions of 17th century Netherlandish scientist Frederik Ruysch.
Hippocrates’ treatise The Nature of the Child describes, in remarkable detail, anatomical features of the human fetus at various stages of development. In it, he attempts to establish causality between the articulation of fetal anatomical features and the constitutional attributes of the mother. For Hippocrates, the study of the developing child was a study of natural order, a lens through which to relate cause and effect. Over a millennium later, against the backdrop of the Vanitas art tradition, anatomist Frederik Ruysch took the anatomical study of children in a bold and unprecedented direction. Using meticulously tested preparations, Ruysch carefully preserved bony and vascular structures, embellished them with floral arrangements, and assembled them in increasingly complex tableaux displays. In each composition, Ruysch infused his anatomical memento mori with the innocence, liveliness and even humor of children to remind the viewer that the body serves as a temporary structure for the eternal soul. Though aesthetically challenging to contemporary tastes, the study of Ruysch requires us to consider deeply what the life and death of a child represents.
Ruysch was quite outspoken that his methods served to honor “the miracles of God Almighty.” When parents pray for a miracle at the bedside of a dying child, they often pray for a restoration of the child’s previously health state- as Jesus did when he restored life to the sick daughter of Jairus in the Gospel of Mark (5:20). If we limit our interpretation of Jairus’ daughter’s resurrection to the purely physical, I argue, we lose an opportunity to consider what hope remains when death is inevitable. Ruysch’s compositions allow us to consider the resurrection of the soul in the glaring presence of physical death.
The course that explores these themes will be offered both to medical and seminary students, with features of both a traditional cross-listed course and an innovative digital platform. Students will critically engage the Hippocratic tradition described in The Nature of a Child, consider how Ruysch’s work both continued and diverged from that tradition, and bring into dialogue anatomists’ resurrected children and the story of Jairus’ daughter to reframe our approach to grief and hope around the death of a child.