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“Fractions of Men”: Engendering Amputation in Victorian Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2012

Erin O'Connor
Erin O'Connor
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In 1866, the Atlantic Monthly published a fictional case study of an army surgeon who had lost all of his limbs during the Civil War. Written anonymously by American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, “The Case of George Dedlow” describes not only the series of wounds and infections which led to the amputation of all four of the soldier's arms and legs but also the after-effects of amputation. Reduced to what he terms “a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than anything of human shape,” Dedlow finds that in disarticulating his body, amputation articulates anatomical norms. His observation of his own uniquely altered state qualifies him to speak in universal terms about the relationship between sentience and selfhood: “I have dictated these pages,” he says, “not to shock my readers, but to possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the body” (1866:5). As such, the story explores the meaning of embodiment, finding in a fragmented anatomy the opportunity to piece together a more complete understanding of how the body functions—physically and metaphysically—as a whole.

Type
Shaping the Social Being
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 1997 , pp. 742 - 777
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1997

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