The fashion industry has currently got a strange morbid curiosity about death, something that seems to be greatly encouraged by certain fashion media outlets that mistakenly assume the death and fashion connection was developed maybe only in modern times with McQueen's dark creations. A more interesting way to maybe approach the fashion and death theme (popular since the 1800s), it's by studying medical collections. Remember, though, to pick credible and scientifically proven ones.
Wealthy people acquired objects and built up collections since the Renaissance. The reasons for collecting were different and went from curiosity to desire for knowledge, social prestige and economic gain. The collections were made up of natural specimens and man-made rarities combined together, and they were known as “cabinets of curiosity”.
In the 18th century the nature and use of the collections went through a major change. This was indeed the Age of Enlightenment and of scientific experimentation, invention and discovery. New plants and animals species were being discovered, artefacts were being brought back from voyages and explorations; innovative systems of classifications were also adopted and new subject areas like geology and archaelogy were developed.
William Hunter's collection was developed around these times. A teacher of anatomy, a clinician, obstetrician and scientific reseacher, Hunter would use rational investigative methods to study medical problems or interesting natural phenomena and, in his studies, he never relied on received wisdom or preconceptions.
He was very interested in pregancy and childbirth and his major discovery was that the blood circulation of the mother and the baby in the placenta were separate. He also studied the lymphatic vessels thoroughly which were understood to be both a drainage mechanism and part of the immune system and wrote about bone, the joints and seasonal breeding in birds.
Hunter's collecting started with the medical specimens he used for teaching and research. Highly skilled at preparing excellent medical specimens, Hunter quickly expanded his collection also thanks to the talent and the expertise of his assistants including his brother John.
Considered as the finest in Britain, the collection opened to the public in 1807 at the University of Glasgow where it was visited by many scientists and members of the public. The collected pieces encouraged young people to study medicine at the university, and medical students could go to the museum to research the specimen in detail.
You may argue that some fashion students or designers may be revolted at the idea of studying human anatomy through a real medical collection and of staring at diseased skulls showing the bony framework of a carcinoma or at jars in which ears, hearts, irises, intestines and other gruesome bits fluctuate, may be rather scary, but, in many ways, this is nearer to the real thing (and probably more inspiring) than the romanticised vision of death that many fashion media outlets are currently writing about.
Besides, not all specimen you may encounter may look like something out of a horror film, but there is a dose of (twisted) beauty about them: two specimen in Hunter's collection refer to the lymphatics of the intestines (last image in this post). Since lynphatics cannot readily be seen with the naked eye Hunter and his assistants demonstrated their existence by injecting the specimes with mercury. The descriptions accompanying these pieces on display at Glasgow's Hunterian Museum state: "Some of Hunter's injected speciments remain unsurpassed in their beauty."
William Hunter once stated, “Anatomy is the only solid foundation of medicine; it is to the physician and surgeon what geometry is to the astronomer.” Anatomy is also the human foundation of fashion. After all, the latter deals with the human body and - on a superficial and external level (as Death states in Giacomo Leopardi's Dialogue between Fashion and Death) - with the destruction and reassemblage of the human figure.
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