The Body Divided Human Beings and Human 'Material' in Modern Medical History

Bodies and body parts of the dead have long been considered valuable material for use in medical science. Over time and in different places, they have been dissected, autopsied, investigated, harvested for research and therapeutic purposes, collected to turn into museum and other specimens, and then displayed, disposed of, and exchanged. This book examines the history of such activities, from the early nineteenth century through to the present, as they took place in hospitals, universities, workhouses, asylums and museums in England, Australia and elsewhere. Through a series of case studies, the volume reveals the changing scientific, economic and emotional value of corpses and their contested place in medical science.

Contents: The body divided in time and place: an introductory essay, Sarah Ferber and Sally Wilde; A body buried is a body wasted: the spoils of human dissection, Helen MacDonald; Cadavers and the social dimension of dissection, Ross L. Jones; Dissection, Anatomy Acts, and the appropriation of bodies in 19th-century Australia: 'the government's brains' and the benevolent asylum, Susan K. Martin; Bodies of evidence: dissecting madness in colonial Victoria (Australia), Dolly MacKinnon; A judicious collector: Edward Charles Stirling and the procurement of Aboriginal bodily remains in South Australia, c.1880-1912, Paul Turnbull; The leprosy-affected body as a commodity: autonomy and compensation, Jo Robertson; Gifts, commodities and the demand for organ transplants, Sally Wilde; Science fiction, cultural knowledge and rationality: how stem cell researchers talk about reproductive cloning, Nicola J. Marks; Inventing the healthy body: the use of popular medical disclosures in public anatomical exhibitions, Elizabeth Stephens; Epilogue, Leo Brown; Index.

Sarah Ferber is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and Sally Wilde is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia.