Human Remains

Helen MacDonald
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Human Remains

Published

1 March 2005

ISBN

9780522851571

Pages

234

Imprint

Melbourne University Press

Human Remains

Helen MacDonald
What should happen to the dead? Bone collecting, body snatching and the politics of the trade in human remains is a gothic tale that still hauts contemporary life.
Human Remains tells the scandalous story of how medical men obtained the corpses upon which they worked before anatomy was regulated in Australia and Britain. Moving back and forth between Britain and the island penal colony of Tasmania, the book examines an era when convicted murderers received the double sentence of both death and dissection. The poor who died in hospital were routinely turned over to the surgeons for study, and men traded in human remains, including those of Aboriginal people.
Human Remains tells the scandalous story of how medical men obtained the corpses upon which they worked before anatomy was regulated in Australia and Britain. Moving back and forth between Britain and the island penal colony of Tasmania, the book examines an era when convicted murderers received the double sentence of both death and dissection. The poor who died in hospital were routinely turned over to the surgeons for study, and men traded in human remains, including those of Aboriginal people.

Helen MacDonald

Helen MacDonald

Helen MacDonald is the author of Possessing the Dead and the critically acclaimed Human Remains, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (History) and was short-listed for the Ernest Scott History Prize. She is an honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

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