An Inartistic Interest: Civil War Medicine, Disability, and the Art of Thomas Eakins

Abstract

While there is an extensive and distinguished body of scholarship exploring the intersection of Thomas Eakins and medical science, his art has not been contextualized critically in relation to American Civil War medicine or the institutional practices of the Army Medical Museum. Within the context of Civil War medicine, Eakins's heroic portraits of surgeons and scientists become more than a reflection of his personal admiration of science and medicine, more than a reflection of the growing professionalization of the medical community in the United States, but implicates him in the narrative of offsetting the horrors wrought by the Civil War by actively enshrining the professionalization of medicine and claims to the advancement of body-based research. Furthermore, while there is an extensive and distinguished body of scholarship exploring the intersection of Thomas Eakins and the body from the perspective of race, gender, and sexuality, the consideration of his work from the perspective of critical disability theory has not been contemplated. Civil War medicine is critical to the art of Thomas Eakins because it demystifies his fascination with the human body, and engages him in the aesthetic reconstruction of disabled veterans and the cultural privileging of the healthy body during and after the American Civil War. By historicizing the science and medical practices that Eakins used and by critically examining his depictions of the body through the lens of disability studies, my thesis raises new critical questions about two of the most researched and theorized topics in Eakins scholarship: medicine and the body.