Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Tanulmányok / Studies - Magyar László András: A testszemlélet 19. századi változásainak tudományos háttere / The Scientific Background to the 19th-century Changes in the Attitude to the Body

The Scientific Background to the 19th-century Changes in the Attitude to the Body LÁSZLÓ ANDRÁS MAGYAR [SUMMARY] After a brief historical introduction and presentation of the sources on which the Hungarian public depended for scientific information, the study embarks on a discussion of how the European attitude to the body changed from the late 18th to the late 19th century. The analysis systématises the changes brought about by science, as well as the effects upon science itself. Stressing that these changes took place in incessant interaction, gradually and differently at various social levels and places, the author differentiates between the following - sometimes contradictory, sometimes causally related - changes in the attitude to the body in the 19th century (and in the adjacent periods of the 18th and 20th centuries). 1. The body lost its sanctity and earlier symbolical meanings for increasingly quantitative, materialistic and "experimental" science. 2. Under the influence of the outlook of modern physiology and evolutionary theories, the body became a living organism, a structural entity, a self-contained world. 3. The body became pliable, malleable, its animal side being emphasised: in this regard the key role was played by the development of comparative anatomy, evolutionism and zoology. 4. Influenced by the romantic glorification of nature and certain philosophical trends, thinking was permeated by the struggle between the natural body and culture/spirit (the suppressed and the suppressor). 5. The ideal of the natural body emerged, with the corollary emergence of Naturbeilkunde and the ideal of the "self-healing body". 6. In philosophies of history and evolutionist theories the body appeared as a historical product. 7. As a result of physiological and comparative anatomical discoveries as well as of the demotion in importance of religious dogmas, the female body ceased to be an inferior variant of the male body and became its alternative on a par with it. 8. The body was socialised: through enlightened health policy, modern public health measures and the emergence of hygienic thinking, the body became a social product, and light was shed on the correlation between the state of the body and the state of society. 9. Consequently, the satisfied body appeared as the source of well-being, and the suppressed body as the source of economic, social and psychic ills. 10. As the use of the microscope spread, cytology, microbiology and neurology evolved and the body as a spectacle expanded, affording an insight into the living body. 11. Owing partly to rising living standards and partly to the achievements of medicine, the importance of professions focussing on the body increased; sovereignty over the body was shared between the patient and the doctor. 12. With the slow spread of hygiene, sewage systems, running water, and the culture of washing, the body became odourless and physical culture and the hygiene industry emerged. 13. The healthy body as a life-goal and ideal emerged, along with the cult of health. Illness and death became more and more rejected, or concealed, by society. At the end of the 19th century, the "folk custom" of being hospitalised for illnesses and death became widespread, as did cremation before burial. 14. Body semiotics emerged (phrenology, gestalt psychology, anthropometry, modern diagnostics, medical statistics, and so on). The body became quantifiable. 15. The body disintegrated, fell into parts. The emerging medical specialties were sharply differentiated, with the first signs of medical teamwork being detectable. 16. Thanks to discoveries, migrations, and faster transportation, ethnic groups mixed increasingly: anthropology presented a growing variety of lifestyles, as well as of social, aesthetic and body types. The body became aesthetically relativised: aggressive (biological) aesthetics surfaced, rising to prominence in the 20th century (racism, eugenics). 17. In science and art autonomous "female" anthropology was born: women tried to redefine themselves and their own aesthetic. 18. Owing to the migrations and colonisation, the European view of the body became globalised, with eastern influences.