Human Remains: Dissection and Its HistoriesYale University Press, 2006 M01 1 - 220 páginas Until 1832, when an Act of Parliament began to regulate the use of bodies for anatomy in Britain, public dissection was regularlyand legallycarried out on the bodies of murderers, and a shortage of cadavers gave rise to the infamous murders committed by Burke and Hare to supply dissection subjects to Dr. Robert Knox, the anatomist. This book tells the scandalous story of how medical men obtained the corpses upon which they worked before the use of human remains was regulated. Helen MacDonald looks particularly at the activities of British surgeons in nineteenth-century Van Diemens Land, a penal colony in which a ready supply of bodies was available. Not only convicted murderers, but also Aborigines and the unfortunate poor who died in hospitals were routinely turned over to the surgeons. This sensitive but searing account shows how abuses happen even within the conventions adopted by civilized societies. It reveals how, from Burke and Hare to todays televised dissections by German anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens, some peoples bodies become other peoples entertainment. |
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... things for an audience like this one.1 His words made us feel it was our right to watch him carve up Peter Meiss . He did not men- tion that in Britain those earlier dissections to which he referred were carried out as a form of ...
... Things seemed to be getting seriously out of hand , and von Hagens's highly publicised activities did not help matters at all . By situating the subjects of dissections at the centre of the narrative , this book differs significantly ...
... things are only meant to be done under licences issued by Her Majesty's Inspector of Anatomy , and in suitably scientific premises . An old brewery hardly qualifies . The German anatomist had read the British Anatomy Act . Knowing he ...
... thing . After all , it was not so different from other shocking forms of British con- temporary art . Indeed , the initial sight of Peter Meiss's pale body , which had been preserved in formaldehyde , disappointed those familiar with ...
... things were rather more complicated than a cursory glance might reveal . Cutting into and dismembering human beings is a particularly confronting kind of work . Those who dissect the dead learn to distance themselves from their sub ...