Windows, Ears, and Assassins

[Eric Alan Weinstein, Centre For English Studies, University Of London]

Steelhead points out:

 As close readers of Michel Foucault's Birth of the
Clinic are smugly aware, "fenestration" is also a rather diabolically
painful surgical "procedure," performed on the inner ear in the hope
enhancing the reception of aural messages.  Hmmmm.

     In St. Ives, Cornwall last summer I saw a most remarkable series
 of drawings and paintings by the sculptress Barbara Hepworth,  entitled
  "The Fenestration of the Ear." These were precise and moving studies
 of a term of physicians performing an extraordinarily painful operation 
on her young son. I believe in the past 20 years more advanced 
techniques have become available and the operation is no longer 
performed in this way. The drawings are in the collection of the Tate 
Gallery (so they may be on-line next year when the E-BMMA [L]
service starts.).