ABSTRACT
Frederick Ruysch is among the best known collectors of anatomical specimens and historians have often commented on the beauty of the objects he produced. However this has distracted us from the larger bulk of his collection which comprised diseased and malformed bodies. This chapter brings these into focus, analysing the observations that Ruysch published in 1690 and were based on his activities as surgeon and city obstetrician, and on the post-mortems that he carried out. In this work he gave detailed accounts of his patients’ conditions before their pieces ended up in pots on his shelves. The chapter argues that Ruysch worked with a particular notion of pathology that should be defined as ‘surgical anatomy’. Based on the interactions between surgery, anatomy and the findings of post-mortems, it had practical value for physicians, surgeons and midwives alike and was at the centre of Ruysch’s teaching on midwifery. Knowledge acquired through dissections also allowed the different professions in the Republic of Medicine to develop closer working relationships than is usually assumed. </abstract>
