The Murder Act of 1752 required that criminals who were not dissected to be hung in chains on a gibbet. Yet just as many non-killers were hung in chains during the years 1752–1801 as in 1700–52. And. by the time use of the gibbet was confined strictly to murder, its use against any crime whatsoever had fallen into disfavour. That process was well under way in London no later than 1700 and was apparent in many other places soon after 1750. Urbane people frequently demanded that gibbets be removed to places more remote from respectable residences, and further back from roadsides to avoid offending travellers’ sensibilities. By the nineteenth century, the erection of a gibbet seemed more often an occasion for carnival than a plausible deterrent to crime. Until its abolition in 1834, however, England’s traditional elites clung to the option of the gibbet almost as determinedly as they did to execution for crimes against property.

The Murder Act of 1752 imposed post-mortem dissection as the primary punishment for all people convicted of that crime. Recent historians have viewed this statute as strikingly regressive. In fact, its purposes and effects were notably humane. It dramatically reduced the number of dissections imposed on criminal bodies in London. By almost entirely confining dissection to murder alone, it substantially ended riots at executions. And, in ensuring a legal supply of “subjects” to anatomists, it helped make surgery as swift as possible in an age before reliable anaesthesia. On the other hand, public anatomization of dead killers was so uncommon that it seems likely to have inspired fascination rather than deterrent horror. And, in failing to supply enough “subjects,” the Act inspired epidemical levels of grave robbery, finally coming undone when enterprising monsters resorted to murder itself in meeting the needs of anatomists, who now seemed complicit in such crimes.

This chapter is concerned with the ethics of keeping animals in zoos. It examines the ethical problems of keeping animals in captivity with particular reference to the ethics of keeping elephants in zoos. Public attitudes towards various aspects of zoos are examined, including attitudes towards dissection, live feeding, euthanasia and the culling of healthy animals. Animal sentience is also discussed, particularly in relation to the inclusion of some invertebrates in this concept.

This chapter discusses the process leading up to, during, and after the execution of the three perpetrators of the Dongo killings. Information about the preparations which took place during the few days between the sentencing and the executions comes from a final accounting of the costs of the trial process. Lucero and other court officials made a special point of acknowledging the difficult work accomplished by a number of people over the course of the two weeks between the crime and the execution. Many worked through “sleepless nights” on this “anguishing process.”

This chapter surveys the broader social contexts for dissection, in four sections: public performance, animals, religion, and popular conceptions of anatomy. The first section offers the context for public displays of dissection, namely competing types of performance, including sophistic lectures, legal proceedings, and the general spectacle of the streets. The second focuses on animals and the various circumstances outside scientific dissection in which bodies were cut into and opened, with specific attention on butchery, veterinary practice, pharmacology, magic, and staged animal shows in the arena. The third turns to religious contexts, encompassing the practices of animal sacrifice and divination from entrails, as well as the Italic votive tradition, which included artistic representations of various internal organs, and the Egyptian practice of embalmment. Finally, there is a sketch of popular experience with and conceptions of bodily rupture and anatomy, ranging from postmortem punishments, public executions and gladiatorial displays in the arena, and military violence to literary descriptions of gore, artistic depictions of bodies, and intellectual engagement with anatomy.

This chapter considers the material and practical requirements of dissection, relying both on Galen’s advice on the subject and on historical and archaeological evidence. After an exploration of the sensory experience of participating in dissections and vivisections, the first section handles anatomical subjects themselves, first monkeys (which Galen considers to be the ideal subjects) then other animals; in each case, the chapter addresses their selection and the probable ways in which dissectors acquired them, covering livestock markets, butchers, trade in exotic animals, and in particular the flow of animals into and out of the arena. It then offers a new and comprehensive consideration of human dissection in antiquity, with a focus on its debated practice in the Roman period. The second half of the chapter considers other requirements for dissection. First of these are the tools, which are presented in terms of selection and acquisition. Next follows a consideration of the books intended to support dissection and their comparative availability. The chapter ends with a look at the people a dissector may have relied on, as assistants in the procedures or as lectors and scribes.

This chapter offers the evidence for the practice of dissection from the fifth through first centuries BC. The chapter begins with dissection among the pre-Socratic philosophers and then moves on to the authors of the Hippocratic Corpus. A discussion of the opportunities for public display in medical contexts of the fifth and early fourth centuries follows, in order to evaluate the range of public contexts within which the practice of dissection would have fallen. Aristotle’s zoological research program and the parallel developments among fourth-century doctors, including Diocles and Praxagoras, then receive sustained attention before a consideration of the advancements of Herophilus and Erasistratus. The chapter next turns to the dearth of evidence for dissection in the centuries after these figures, touching on various sects, both medical and philosophical, including the Herophileans, Erasistrateans, Empiricists, and Peripatetics. Finally, it considers the opportunities for public medical display in the Hellenistic period, as revealed via both texts and inscriptions.

This chapter tackles Galen’s minor anatomical works and the role of dissection in his oeuvre. It begins with his account of these works and then addresses them in roughly chronological order. Each section describes a text or pair of texts and evaluates the role of dissection within them, particular attention being given to lost texts in order to provide the fullest details possible. On the Dissection of the Uterus comes first. Next, the lost, original iteration of Anatomical Procedures receives extensive analysis, with a reconstruction of its contents. On the Dissection of the Dead (Arabic only) and On the Dissection of the Living (lost), On Controversies in Anatomy (lost), and On the Difference between the Homoeomerous Parts (Arabic only) follow. Next, the better-preserved works for beginners, On Bones, On the Dissection of the Veins and Arteries, and On the Dissection of the Nerves, and the more sophisticated On the Dissection of the Muscles are considered. After a brief description of his works dedicated to others’ anatomical output, the chapter concludes with the role that Galen allocates to dissection in his oeuvre, with particular attention to On the Usefulness of the Parts.

This is the introduction to the volume as a whole. It opens by considering Apuleius’ claims to dissection as evidence for a widespread interest in anatomy and dissection in the ancient world, particularly in the Roman period. It goes on to define the terms dissection and anatomy as used throughout the book and to lay out the overarching subject and aims of the project, while situating it within existing literature related to the topic. It particularly seeks to highlight the prevalence and importance of animal dissection, as opposed to the much rarer instances of human dissection, and to emphasize the pivotal role of the Roman period, which has often been underplayed in favor of the Hellenistic period. It concludes with an overview of the structure and contents of the book.

The epilogue explores the evidence for dissection and anatomical literature in Late Antiquity. It addresses the seeming hiatus in anatomical activity after Galen, introducing the topic via Vesalius’ retrospective thoughts, which blame Galen’s enervating authority. It starts with fourth-century evidence, pictorial and textual, observing that Galen, while a dominant voice, was not the lone authority; major figures considered include Vindicianus, Nemesius of Emesa, Oribasius, and Gregory of Nyssa. It then turns to the fifth to seventh centuries, addressing the medical curriculum in Alexandria and the evidence from Stephanus of Athens and Paul of Aegina. Finally, it contrasts the absence of evidence for anatomical activity in the Late Antique West after the seventh century with the modest but more vibrant interest in the East, addressing the question of whether human dissection reemerged as an option in Byzantium in this period; major figures considered include Meletius, Theophilus Protospatharius, Michael Choniates, and George Tornikios. The epilogue ends with Hunayn ibn Ishaq and his Syriac and Arabic translations, representing the beginning of the next chapter in anatomical history.

This chapter explores the practice of dissection in the first and second centuries AD, based largely on the evidence of Galen but drawing a picture beyond his activities alone. Divided into sections according to the contexts of and motivations for dissection, it begins with private dissections for practice and research. It next turns to performative dissections, beginning with those for public display. These public dissections occurred at different scales, and this section considers their contents, their diverse practitioners, and the size and make-up of their various audiences, including a discussion of venues, such as auditoria, and their capacities. The chapter then turns to examples of dissection specifically for medical advertisement, including evidence for public surgery, and then to two instances of dissection in the context of formal competition, one attested textually, the other epigraphically. Finally, it zeroes in on the competitive motivations of Roman dissection and its use in the adjudication of medical and philosophical debates, as well as in the jockeying between rivals.

This chapter explores the beginning of the end of the emotional regime of Romantic sensibility and the origins of surgical scientific modernity. It illuminates this crucial period of transition through the juxtaposition of two distinct but conceptually and ideologically intertwined moments in surgical history. These are, firstly, the debates surrounding the practice of anatomical dissection that came to the fore in the 1820s and culminated in the passage of the Anatomy Act in 1832, and, secondly, the introduction and early use of inhalation anaesthesia in the later 1840s. In both instances it highlights the powerful influence of utilitarian thought in divesting the body, both as object and subject, of emotional meaning and agency. In the former instance it demonstrates how an ultra-rationalist understanding of sentiment was set in opposition to popular ‘sentimentalism’ in order to divest the dead bodies of the poor of emotional value. Meanwhile, in the latter, it considers how the emotional subjectivity of the newly anaesthetised patient was swiftly tamed by the operations of a techno-scientific rationale.

Graeme Laurie and the late Ken Mason once commented that the Human Tissue Act 2004 had been ‘born under the wrong star’. Alas, ‘baleful stars’ have often blighted this area of medicine, and this chapter reflects on the past in order to consider the prospects of success for new legislation across the United Kingdom introducing ‘deemed consent’ for deceased organ donation. It outlines how a legacy of fear and distrust beset the uses of human corpses, from the ‘anatomical renaissance’ and the donation by the Kings of Scotland and England of the bodies of executed criminals for dissection to the enactment of the Human Tissue Act 2004 and the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006 in the wake of public outrage over non-consensual organ retention for research and teaching. It argues that, whatever the letter of the law, grieving families cannot be ignored. A supportive, well-organised transplant system in hospitals at the point of death is as crucial as debates about the pros and cons of opt-in or opt-out. How the new legislative frameworks for donation are implemented in practice will be as important as the words in the statute-books.