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Paperback Hardback eBook
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Published 01-03-2005
ISBN 9780522851571
Pages 234
Subjects History of medicine
Imprint MUP POD

Human Remains

Helen MacDonald

Formats

Paperback Hardback eBook
Share
Published 01-03-2005
ISBN 9780522851571
Pages 234
Subjects History of medicine
Imprint MUP POD

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.

About The Author

Helen MacDonald is the author of 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 a Senior Fellow at The Australian Centre in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.