Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
![Digital Commons Network](http://assets.bepress.com/20200205/img/dcn/DCsunburst.png)
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Material Witnesses: Deconstructing Networks Of Credibility And Objectivity In Medical Narratives From Mary Toft To The Contraceptive Pill, Krista Elizabeth Roberts
Material Witnesses: Deconstructing Networks Of Credibility And Objectivity In Medical Narratives From Mary Toft To The Contraceptive Pill, Krista Elizabeth Roberts
Theses and Dissertations
In this dissertation, I argue that to better understand the tangled, embedded human and nonhuman subjects and how their testimonies function in western medical history, we need to first understand their erasure. By using relationality as a reading method, I break apart who and with whom individuals make medical decisions by considering what constitutes evidence. In the Mary Toft case, expert witnessing informs the ways in which a reader trusts what the narrator claims. The medicolegal conventions of courtroom testimony shape the ways in which medical men wrote their pamphlets. These men shore up their credibility through descriptions of nonhuman …