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Anatomy of Dread: The Victorian Obsession for Blood, Disease, and the Gothic Revival
Victorian England’s fascination with blood symbolized both life and corruption, merging medical science with Gothic horror. Bloodletting, early transfusions, and vampiric lore underscored anxieties about…
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Death, Burial Spaces and the Dead-House in Victorian Asylums
The later Victorian asylum was increasingly dominated by anatomical pathological mental science based on thousands of post-mortems conducted on the dead among captive patient populations.
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The Rise of Obscene Public Anatomy in Victorian London
Dr Joseph Kahn’s Anatomical and Pathological Museum was the nineteenth-century’s best-known and most visited public museum of anatomy.
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Hunter’s Resurrection, Corpse Art, and the Stolen Irish Giant
In his portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1786, the Irish Carver, the Giant’s skeletal feet are clearly visible in…
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The Hideous Rise and Fall of Celebrity, Murderous Pathology
What has happened to the thoughtful, bowler-hatted figure of the forensic pathologist, the spectacular but fallible artist of battered flesh?
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Dissecting The Condemned Body Leaving the Courtroom
The widespread observation that contemporaries were often confused by the organic instability of death and dying, leads us to a second generic theme in this…
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The Murder Act Dissections: A Fate Worse than Death
Anatomy, the branch of science concerned with the bodily structure of humans, especially as revealed by dissection and the separation of parts.
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Prescientific Death Rites, Vampires, and the Human Soul
For most of us in twentieth-first-century Europe and North America, few things are so absolute as death.
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Art of the Dead: Mangling the Dissected, Past and Present
Art of the dead or the idea that the anatomisation of the body is tantamount to “hacking”, “distorting”, or “disfiguring”? True, what once was a…
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Anatomist’s Knife and Dissection in Victorian England
In Victorian times, dissection was then regarded with horror. Even at present, the prejudices of the people on this subject are violent and deep-rooted.
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Body-Snatchers and the Legal, Grave Medical Problem
The activities of the eighteenth-century body-snatchers are among the most lurid and entertaining episodes in the history of medicine.
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The Bygone Times Of The Frightening Plague Doctors
To provide medical care and to protect themselves, doctors of the time invented the medieval version of a hazmat suit, worn by the infamous Plague…
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