Machine Body of Modern Western Medicine

Abstract

The modern western medical discourse of the body is dominant in our society, and the world, today. One of its main features is the separation of the body as anatomy, a structure of parts (including organs), from the body as physiology, a system of functions (performed by organs). Both anatomy and physiology operate together as a whole; one is not possible without the other, except perhaps in death when physiology ceases to function, but anatomy is still intact at least for a short while. By separating out structure from systems, parts from processes, form from function, modern western medicine figures the body as a machine (with, for example, the heart as a pump which Harvey ‘discovered’ only after seeing a pump in operation). The body from this point of view is, as Mumford (1934, p.32) puts it:

a sort of microcosm of the machine: the arms are levers, the lungs are bellows, the eyes are lenses, the heart is a pump, the fist is a hammer, the nerves are a telegraph system with a central station.

This view is historically contingent because figuring the nerves as a telegraph system and the brain as the central station could only occur after the invention of such systems of communication technologies. Similarly, any contemporary attempt to figure the brain as a computer is also doomed to such historical contingency (see Porter, 1997, p.550).