False Images Do Not Lie: Using Anatomy in Rene Descartes' Treatise on Man

Illustrations and paper technologies contributed to and enhanced early modern science and especially the study of anatomy during the sixteenth century, not least by providing more accurate representations of the human body and allowing for the dissemination of consistent images. This paper documents a moment in the use of anatomical illustration involving disputes over Rene Descartes' posthumously published Treatise on Man (1662/1664), a work with its own convoluted history and reception, involving multiple copies of the original manuscript and three sets of illustrations made by three different physicians: one set for the Latin edition and two others for the French edition. Focusing on these illustrations, this paper will argue that they primarily model how the visible movements of the body might be caused, with little attention to accurately describing the parts of the body as seen in dissection. In the medical terminology of the period, they narrowly focus on actio--action or function--and were conceived as an answer to the question of how the hidden parts of the body operate. In this way, they provide an alternative to traditional anatomical illustrations focused on historia and how the body is actually structured. Thus the Treatise is an especially interesting work for its history, for the disputes and rationale that led to its famous images, their reproduction both in later published works and in students' notebooks throughout Europe, and for the demarcated yet productive role given to anatomical illustrations apart from an accurate description of the human body.