Malleable anatomies: Models, makers, and material culture in eighteenth-century Italy.

"Malleable Anatomies offers an account of the early stages of the practice of anatomical modeling in mid-eighteenth-century Italy. It investigates the "mania" for anatomical displays that swept the Italian peninsula, and traces the fashioning of anatomical models as important social, cultural, and political as well as medical tools. Over the course of the eighteenth century, anatomical specimens offered particularly accurate insights into the inner body. Being colored, soft, malleable, and often life-size, they promised to foster anatomical knowledge for different audiences in a delightful way. But how did anatomical models and preparations inscribe and mediate bodily knowledge? How did they change the way in which anatomical knowledge was created and communicated? And how did they affect the lives of those involved in their production, display, viewing, and handling?" (publisher).