Normal
by
Normal regularly functions as an approximate synonym for “healthy.” The word emerged in writing about medicine and health at the start of the nineteenth century and has played a prominent role there ever since. But even as the term continues to hold a central place in the field, its precise meaning can appear vague and elusive. A useful way to bring this ambiguity under control is to identify the series of meanings, some of them inconsistent to the point of contradiction, that the word has taken on in the two centuries or so since it first appeared. Normal came into use as a term in the medical sciences around 1820 in France, when Étienne Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, a leading comparative anatomist, used it to characterize organs whose function presented a high degree of integration with the organs around them. Normal organs were by this definition neither dominant nor subordinate: they simply played their structural role. But while Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire came later to be regarded by many as a pioneer of evolutionary anatomy, his classificatory innovation proved to be less consequential in the nineteenth century than the slightly later use of some physiologist colleagues. Around 1830, French physiologists began to use the concept of...
This essay may be found on page 147 of the printed volume.