The Body Silent

The Body Silent is a personal narrative written by a Robert F. Murphy, a professor at Columbia University. This piece is a narrative of personal struggle through a spinal condition, published in 1987 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. He uses this narrative to tell his journey through a deteriorating spinal condition leading to paraplegia. Diagnosed with a tumor extending from his second cervical vertebra to the eigth thoracic vertebra in 1972. Through his narrative he tells his medical history and how the diagnosis of old medicine (late 1920's) knew very little about neurology, and left undetected problems which created a new issue in his 50's. As an anthropology professor at Columbia University, he applies his field to his medical journey. "This book was conceived in the realization that my long illness with a disease of the spinal cord has been a kind of extended anthropological field trip, for through it I have sojourned in a social world no less strange to me at first than those of the Amazon forests. And since it is the duty of all anthropologists to report on their travels . . . this is my accounting." Due to funded research of his medical experiences and conditions, he provides the readers with a description and explanation of what he deals with, with a constant discussion of future possibility and his mindset throughout.

Production

the National Science Foundation funded production of his book, and was published by Henry Hold and Company, Inc. 521 Fifth Avanue, New York, New York.

Genre

Metapathography pieces are not stories and tales of sickness, but a professional self-analysis and in-depth writing of ones personal state. Although Metapathography is not a classified genre, other authors and professionals who reviewed his material defined it set aside from a personal narrative, due to his thorough analysis of mental and physical condition.

Biography

Robert Francis Murphy was born on March 3, 1924, in Far Rockaway, New York. He grew up with a non-involved father and a mother battling breast cancer. She died when he was 14, and his grandmother took over the family. He remained studious and became a distinguished anthropologist and professor of anthropology at Columbia University in New York City, from the early 1960s to 1990. He studied many different cultures across the globe, such as the Mundurucu of the Amazon and tribes in the Sahara. At the age of 66, he died in his home in Leonia, New Jersey.

Medical History

in 1928, Murphy lost the use of his leg. A house doctor diagnosed him with "a touch of Rheumatism" which took him two weeks to recover. Murphy begins to experience muscle spasms in his anus, and in his lower abdomen in 1972, and soon had trouble urinating. he was then diagnosed with an anal fissure, meaning of a slight break in the muscle. After a few years of symptoms, he visited a neurologist and was diagnosed with a benign but slowly growing tumor in the upper part of his spinal cord. Within two years his central nervous system was severely damaged, and lost control of most bodily functions. he died in his home on October 8th, 1990.

Accomplishments

He traveled to the Amazon and Africa on anthropological field trips and created many texts.  The Trumai Indians of Central Brazil (Monographs of the American Ethnological Society) (1955)  Tappers and Trappers: Parallel Process in Acculturation (1956) Economic Development and Cultural Change 4.  Matrilocality and Patrilineality in Mundurucu Society. American Anthropologist (1956) Vol. 58 (3:3): 414-433  Mundurucu Religion (University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology) (1958)  The Structure of Parallel Cousin Marriage (1959)  Headhunter's Heritage: Social and Economic Change Among the Mundurucu Indians (1960)  Social Distance and the Veil (about Tuareg men's veiling practices) (1964)  The Dialectics of Social Life: Alarms and Excursions in Anthropological Theory (1971)  Robert H. Lowie (Leaders of Modern Anthropology) (1972)  Evolution and Ecology: Essays on Social Transformation (1978, co-authored with Julian H. Steward and Jane C. Steward)  American Anthropology, 1946-1970: Papers from the American Anthropologist (2002)  Women of the Forest (1974), co-authored with Yolanda (first author)

Awards

in 1987, his book was awarded the Columbia University Lionel Trilling Award.

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