The Standardization of Female Anatomical Terms
***Content Warning: Description of Rape***
In “The Fate of Popular Terms for Female Anatomy in the Age of Print” (a 1999 article in the journal French Historical Studies), Alison Klairmont-Lingo explores the effect of the printing press on French terminology of anatomy. Specifically, the article looks at the impact of several printed works which contributed to the standardization of terms used to describe female anatomy. This standardization began shortly after the resurgence of dissection, when the uncovering of new anatomical structures called for new nomenclature; this nomenclature varied between physicians and cultures.
By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the terms for female anatomy had become more standardized; this was in part driven by the “purification” of returning from Arabic to Greek and Latin terms, as well as by the advent of the printing press. In making media more readily available, the printing press created an interesting world for anatomical description in which standardization flourished. So did accessibility. This accessibility meant that more people could learn about the descriptions and terms published, often having negative consequences in the morally rigid world in which the terms were used.
Indeed, it was due to this moral rigidity that the terminology became standardized at all. Prior to the advent of medical terms, female genitalia was often described using euphemisms. There was a common theme among midwives to draw similarities between the “lips” of the vulva and the lips of the mouth; in some cases, translations were even be taken a step further as “gossip” or “big talker.” The midwives compared the genitalia to well understood parts of the body, as well as to common concepts; particularly interesting is language used when describing a woman’s raped body:
the depositions include language that compares a woman’s raped body to a territory attacked, an individual soldier conquered, mutilated, or in retreat, and a castle whose door was entered forcibly. Thus, the depositions describe the neck of the womb cleaved, the lady of the middle (hymen) in retreat, the nymphs (labia minora) destroyed or sundered, the back ditch (cervix) opened, the neck of the womb split, the edge of labia peeled or flayed, the os pubis bone crashed, burst, broken to pieces, bruised, and crushed, and the clitoris flayed and skinned. (pg 341)
This type of descriptive language was common and often the images varied between French midwives; however, all were seen as vulgar and inaccurate. It is because of this perception that male anatomists created their own descriptive language, one (Laurent Joubert, 1578) going so far as to say that these terms were “ ‘proper and peculiar to . . . [midwives] alone, which are like terms of the trade, or a jargon of their craft, under-stood by very few people.’ ” (p 338). In publishing a review of these terms, Joubert brought to light a side of terminology not seen in the previously published works on midwifery, such as that by Louise Bourgeois (seen above); the result was backlash of the accessibility to such vulgarity. Thus, in a second printing, Joubert added asterisks to the worst sections as a sign for young women to skip them.
This vulgarity was certainly part of the impetus to change the nomenclature. Jacques Du Val published a work in 1612 which he hoped would spread medical information to the masses; thus, he included illustrations as well as the common midwifery descriptions. He was in a minority in thinking that rather than being shameful, these things were natural and good; he was vocal about willing to endure the shame associated with publishing his work in order to create a safer medical environment. However, this ideal did not survive long; as more medical textbooks were published, the language of the midwives which he championed was replaced by unassuming and unambiguous terminology.
This scholarly article summary was written for a Vassar College 2017 Spring course called Sex, Gender, and the History of Medicine. It was part of a unit on dissection and anatomy.
