Analysis Of A Scientific Image: The Start Of Oral Hygiene By Displaying Teeth As An Illustration In The 19th Century
Introduction: How Do Art And Science Relate?
The image of the human body has been analyzed through science and art for centuries. This has been mainly done by looking at a scientific representation of the body (Sturken & Cartwright, 2018). This approach is not as objective as it is claimed, because it ends up with value-laden theories about different bodies. However, these sorts of theories provide information about anatomy or pathology. The spectators are educated about their behaviour and are informed about the treatment of the body by mostly depicting the body on display.
In this sense, when the body is put on display a whole new culture appears. This culture is referred to as the Visual Culture of the body which also contributes to the birth of the scientific medical gaze (Long, 1992). The focus of this analysis is on how the gaze relates to power, normalization, and shame (Foucault, 1995). This is done by exploring the picture of the body that has been at the centre. This has been achieved mostly by looking at the body in the past and relating it to normative and moral issues.
The Mouth On Display
A scientific illustration is an artwork, that bears much more. Art is discovering information about development in the scientific sector (van Dijck, 2005). It is normal to not associate art with science. Both seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum. But most people have seen scientific illustrations in school books or elsewhere. Even if they are not recognized as artwork, they exist. For example, the most prominent part of the body is the mouth. Discovering the mouth and its healthcare was vital at a specific period of time, because it was an undiscovered part of the body (Fox, 1806). This is why they started to conduct visual anthropology on teeth has been done in the past so that it allowed people to understand how to treat teeth (Fox, 1806).
The history of the treatment of teeth dates back to the 19th century when illustrations such as Figure 1 started to emerge. This is a true depiction of Scientific artwork. It shows us what people at the time were thinking about when it came to a person's mouth. This illustration does not only focus on the beauty and the look of teeth, but more importantly, it centres around health and treatment. It proves to some extent what people were looking for at that time which is that they were looking at it in a new way to improve their health. This means that teeth became a focal point. Consequently, the goal became to comprehensively understand how to care for them.
Figure 1. Sketches of teeth: Involves treatment and health improvement.
Figure 1 is an image from the book “The History and Treatment of The Diseases Of The Teeth, The Gums, and the Alveolar Processes, with the operations which they respectively require”, by Joseph Fox. The book's original publication was around 1806. That was a time during which a lot of medical changes were happening (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018). People in the Western world were looking for understanding and answers to what was happening in their own bodies or other bodies. They had done that by depicting the body in public or in other words by putting the body on display. In this sense through art, it is possible to discover scientific developments, because the artwork contributes by illustrating the information found. It communicates complex details, concepts and subjects, therefore the task at hand becomes simpler to grasp.
A Short Explanation Of Why We Display The Body In Modern Science
It is important to analyze the following two philosophers. That is Descartes and La Mettrie (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018). They are part of modernity in all kinds of sciences because humans were becoming the centre of the world. Therefore, both philosophers developed theories about the body and came up with concluding answers such as that human bodies are like machines, along with coming up with the concept of Man-machine (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018).
This changed the concept of the body because the body became known as a machine. This thought influenced the case of the body in anatomy and other sectors. For example, Versalius was the first anatomer, who opened up bodies and displayed the anatomical body (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018). This has been an important step for modern medicine. It allowed for important discoveries such as Harvey’s discovery of blood circulation (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018). He was able to deduce that the body is a machine with a pump (the heart).
"Man is a Machine and in the whole universe there is but a single substance, matter, variously modified." - Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Then came the body being put on display. Through public dissections, people were allowed a look inside (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018). The dissections were painted which allowed audiences and everyone outside of the room to look into the body. This means that scientific illustration such as in Figure 1, allowed not only the audience present at the dissection but also people to look inside the mouth who were not there.
The focus of the scientific illustrations was not limited to the study of the Western world. It also looked at the ‘other’ body on display, which contributed to the creation of the Western gaze (Foucault, 1995). The Western gaze means that there is a Western way of looking at the bodies. This resulted in a visual culture presented where bodies were ‘othered’ (Foucault, 1995). Also here the illustration of Figure 1 could be this type of image created by someone from the West, which could potentially be used to compare ‘other’ people who are not from the Western place. This could be considered as one of the consequences of the Western scientific gaze.
Diving Into How The Gaze Relates To Power, Normalization and Shame
Figure 1 is a display of teeth (Fox, 1806). Above each drawing of the mouth is a number. On the left side and right there is a row of different mouths/teeth, both ugly and pretty or in other words they are unhealthy or healthy. The prettier ones are very straight and white. The uglier ones are rather displeasing because they are crooked and decaying teeth. Some mouths are displayed with the gums, while others have a full mouth with the teeth included with their lips.
There are numbers above each set of teeth. Number 1 shows teeth, lips and crooked front teeth. Number 2 shows decaying front teeth and crooked side teeth. Number 3 has a big front gap and gums. Number 4 has a decaying tooth and above that a crooked tooth. Number 5 is a perfect set of teeth with lips showing. Number 6 is sort of chipped teeth with the gum showing. Number 7, is perfect teeth attached to the gum. Numbers 8 and 9 are crooked and chipped teeth showing. Number 10 (a), shows two loose teeth. Number 11 has two front teeth missing and shows just gums.
Through analysing the visual image a few remarks can be made that is that the main goal of the Illustration was to describe diseases in the mouth. This was a typical focal point that started in the 18th century which was a paradigm in which diseases were explained (Long, 1992). The explanations were based on facts of anatomy by describing that the diseases were explained as disorders within a certain tissue within the body, while Pathology offers logic to diseases based on anatomy. These new discoveries helped society to evolve and become more healthier.
This encouraged people such as Bichat to say "Open up a few corpses", even though it was the manners of becoming healthier were at most parts still considered controversial (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018). But his statement carried some truth and most importantly it implies the answer to most health problems. Theoretically, contemporary medicine was about the body being dissected and in turn, it contributed to the thought that the body is analysed in a new way and allows us to scrutinize the body. Foucault labelled this as the medical gaze (Long, 1992). In other words, it is when doctors learn to look at the body in a different way. Before that, doctors assumed what was going on with the body without looking inside, but opening it up allowed for a new discourse. Consequently, Doctors started talking about illnesses, health and the body in a different way.
Figure 2. Hygiene has become a vital form of self care.
The fact that new medicine allowed for new discussion is a paradox to the panoptic ideas, where the power of the gaze is automatic surveillance (Foucault, 1995). This is because of the medical gaze or simply put the doctor is looking at the human body from the outside and inside. This means that the gaze is no longer associated with a certain powerful person. The gaze does come from someone looking at you, but there is no dangerous powerplay going on. For that reason, it is assumed that there is an experience of being seen, which means one can be judged in the eyes of the other. For example, a doctor looking at a sick patient at his office. The patient might feel as if they are being judged by the eyes of another.
But in modern medicine, there should be no powerplay. However, there might be some sort of shame involved. Even if there is no one directly looking at the 'patient' this feeling can be internalized. But if one knows they are visible, their behaviour can be judged. This might motivate the patient to still try to keep healthy by brushing their teeth even if no one is there, without the influence of power play. The feeling of judgment can be considered normal or deviant because the discourse determines normal and deviant behaviour (Lock & Nguyen, 2010).
Therefore, judgment can be felt without anyone being there, which in turn might motivate a patient to do better to not end up at the doctor's office again. In other words, the person would then take measures to normalize one's body. These feelings that arose within the patient to change stem from shame. This means that in some way shame shapes our bodies. This was discovered as a feeling and discussed in court society around 14-15 centuries (Dolezal, 2015). This is because society discovered that people were anxious to fail if they could not keep up with the civilization process. Their failings were marked by shame, but shame is necessary for social regulations. Because it can shape our bodies, directions and behaviour. Furthermore, it was discovered that this was mainly possible through acute shame which made it clear that it was an incentive to meet social norms. However, there was another sort of feeling referred to as chronic shame that cannot be acted on directly. For example, people seek cosmetic interventions to reshape their bodies.
Conclusion: How Does This Past Illustration Of Teeth Shape The Present?
Through visual representation, the gaze and shame result in normalization and a functioning society that we live in today. ‘Looking within’ to cut open the body is a privilege since it helped society to evolve into healthy modern human beings (Long, 1992). A form of advanced medical knowledge has come to rise and there is power in combining these two, image and looking within the body. Through semiotic tools, the images can be interpreted which aids contemporary medicine as we know it.
With the help of the example illustrated in Figure 1, health can be described through scientific artwork. If one's teeth are decaying as in Figure 1 Number 4, it is assumed that medical treatment is needed. The opposite is assumed if they are as straight and white as in Number 5. Images like this shape norms (Lock & Nguyen, 2010). These images also improved medical health services by allowing doctors to treat tooth diseases. Until today these improvements are evident and useful. Now it is common sense to consider white teeth a status Symbol. Concluding that displaying teeth has indexed -points to- health and beauty (Cartwright & Sturken, 2018). Without these drastic measures taken by daredevil medical philanthropists, society would have not been able to preserve itself as they have now.
References
Cartwright, L. & Sturken, M. (2018) Practices of Looking. Chapters 1, 3 & 9. Oxford University Press
Dolezal, L. (2015). The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body. In Chapter 3 “Shame and the socially shaped body: Foucault and Elias” p. 53-76. Lexington Books.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Fragments on discipline and panopticism p. 135-141 & 200-209. Random House Inc.
Fox, J. (1806). The History and treatment of the diseases of the teeth, the gums, and the alveolar processes, with the operations which they respectively require. To which are added, observations on other diseases of the mouth, and on the mode of fixing artificial teeth. In Plate III p. 179. James Swan.
Irregularities of the teeth. (n.d.). Royal Society Print Shop. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://prints.royalsociety.org/collections/science-and-anatomy-prints-d...
Lock, M., & Nguyen, V. K. (2010). An anthropology of biomedicine. In “The normal body” p. 32-56. John Wiley & Sons.
Van Dijck, J. (2005). Chapter 7: The Transparent Body. In The cultural analysis of medical imaging p. 118-137. University of Washington Press.