"With much nausea, loathing, and foetor": William Harvey, dissection, and dispassion in early modern medicine.

In early modern England accumulating knowledge of normal and morbid anatomy through dissecting the human body not only led to a better understanding of nature, but also defined the identity of the people who engaged in this activity. This essay analyses the relationship between systemically dismembering the dead and how this pursuit shaped the attitudes and emotions of early modern medical men toward the living. I focus on the most famous anatomist in early modern Britain - the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, William Harvey (1578-1657).