Autopsy.

I’m almost finished with Richard Tarrant’s Texts, Editors, and Readers (1, 2, 3), and I was brought up short by this passage in the concluding chapter: “some particularly important manuscripts – including the Codex Venetus A of Homer – can be studied in greater detail in digitized form than by any other means, including autopsy.” Of course I was aware that autopsy is from Greek αὐτοψία ‘act of seeing with one’s own eyes’ (which is why Stan Brakhage called his disturbing 1971 film about forensic pathologists The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes), but I hadn’t known that that sense was used in English. A trip to the OED (entry revised 2011) proved enlightening: 1. The action or process of seeing with one’s own eyes; personal observation, inspection, or experience. Now rare. 1607 It is apparently knowne, especially to them which are skild in the autopsie of Anatomie, the seat or fountaine head of it, is..a great hollow veine. T. Walkington, The Optick Glasse of Humors. Or The Touchstone…