Track My Order
Help Centre
1300 187 187
Likes
My Wish ListsLogin / Join
Booktopia
Australia's local bookstore
Icons of Life : A Cultural History of Human Embryos - Lynn Morgan

Icons of Life

A Cultural History of Human Embryos

By: Lynn Morgan

Paperback | 9 September 2009 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback

RRP $59.40

$57.25

or 4 interest-free payments of $14.31 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 7 to 10 business days

Icons of Life tells the engrossing and provocative story of an early twentieth-century undertaking, the Carnegie Institution of Washington's project to collect thousands of embryos for scientific study. Lynn M. Morgan blends social analysis, sleuthing, and humor to trace the history of specimen collecting. In the process, she illuminates how a hundred-year-old scientific endeavor continues to be felt in today's fraught arena of maternal and fetal politics. Until the embryo collecting project-which she follows from the Johns Hopkins anatomy department, through Baltimore foundling homes, and all the way to China-most people had no idea what human embryos looked like. But by the 1950s, modern citizens saw in embryos an image of "ourselves unborn," and embryology had developed a biologically based story about how we came to be. Morgan explains how dead specimens paradoxically became icons of life, how embryos were generated as social artifacts separate from pregnant women, and how a fetus thwarted Gertrude Stein's medical career. By resurrecting a nearly forgotten scientific project, Morgan sheds light on the roots of a modern origin story and raises the still controversial issue of how we decide what embryos mean.
Industry Reviews
"A remarkable work that seems destined to have a significant impact both within and well beyond anthropology." -- Janelle S. Taylor, University of Washington American Anthropologist "Fascinating and rigorously documented... Recommended." Choice "Morgan's book is important. Icons of Life provides a crucial resource for historians of medicine, anatomy, science and reproduction." Isis "Morgan has done a masterful and truly respectful job discerning what it is that embryos might tell us about the shifting organization and logic of collective life." Bulletin Of The History Of Medicine

You Can Find This Book In

Non-FictionSociology & AnthropologyAnthropologySociety & CultureSocial Issues & ProcessesMedicineMedicine in GeneralMedical SociologyPre-Clinical Medicine & Basic SciencesHuman Reproduction, Growth & DevelopmentReproductive MedicineEmbryology
History of MedicineEthical Issues & DebatesArchaeology

More in Archaeology

Ancestors : A prehistory of Britain in seven burials - Alice Roberts

Ancestors

A prehistory of Britain in seven burials

Paperback

RRP $24.99

$23.75

The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity - David Graeber

The Dawn of Everything

A New History of Humanity

Paperback

RRP $26.99

$25.75

Colonialism : A Moral Reckoning - Nigel Biggar

Colonialism

A Moral Reckoning

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$23.35

33%
OFF
Archaeology of Ancient Australia - Peter Hiscock

Archaeology of Ancient Australia

Paperback

RRP $83.99

$73.75

12%
OFF
The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East - Karen Sonik

The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East

Paperback

RRP $94.99

$74.25

22%
OFF
The Saxon Age : Commentaries of an Era - A.F. Scott

The Saxon Age

Commentaries of an Era

Paperback

RRP $58.99

$48.95

17%
OFF

This product is categorised by