Medical bodysnatching

[ethelfleda]

On the 18th century medical profession's attempts to get the body of Charles Byrne, the 'Irish Giant': Already when Charles Byrne was ill, many London surgeons, who had seen and admired him when he as on exhibition, competed to get hold of his corpse for dissection. A newspaper article stated that 'the whole tribe of surgeons put in a claim for the

Comments

[silvertarna]

I've seen his skeleton there, and that story was 'mysteriously' not mentioned there. Thanks for sharing that, it's good to have context.

[ethelfleda]

All the medical collections are a bit "it fell of the back of a bus and is ours now, ask no more questions" about their exhibits.

Some of them it's also rather indirect - also in the Hunterian there's the "Two-Headed Boy Of Bengal" (or rather, the bairn's two fused skulls). His body was dug up by medical grave-robbers in the far east, but had passed through at least three sets of hands before it got to the Hunterian. So they could claim to have no knowledge of the process, as long as they were careful not to ask any questions...

Julia Pastrana was there

[vaivaivan]

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