Overview

Anatomy museums contain some of the most compelling and challenging displays of the human body. This innovative book focusing on one such museum in Scotland's northeast opens up a wide-ranging history of deceased bodies on display, from medieval relics, to nineteenth-century mega-collections of human remains, to the controversial Body Worlds  exhibition that is touring the globe. A surprisingly varied and ever-changing material and visual culture of human anatomy emerges through this history, shaped by multiple factors, including colonialism and war, as well as shifts in medical institutions, technologies and media.

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9781861893758

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Hallam uses the Anatomy Museum at the University of Aberdeen, UK, to anchor a history of collections of human anatomical remains as 'synoptic mazes'--labyrinthine summations of knowledge. She charts their convoluted chronicles of acquisition, dissection and preservation, weaving in a narrative on the cultural display of death, from ancient ossuaries to plastinated bodies. --Nature For the reviewer, a fan of the history of science in general, particularly the study of anatomy and physiology, it is difficult not to be effusive about this volume . . . This book will be a valuable addition to collections that serve practitioners and historians of the study and treatment of the human body. Recommended. --Choice This book concerns the post-mortem experience of those patients, or parts of them, as well as the lived experience of the students who studied them. It is as much a history of anatomical education (in which museums played a changing role) as it is of this type of museum itself. It is a peculiar, but ultimately successful, mix of a history of animated display, reviewing how anatomical specimens have been 'brought to life' over a period of several centuries, and a specific social and cultural case study of the Anatomy Museum of Marischal College (Aberdeen), from its origins in the 1830s until its closure in 2009. . . . The author draws on her experience of using the museum, prior to the transfer of the collections elsewhere, and this lavishly illustrated book contains several photographs drawn from the small archival room she discovered there. . . . Innovative. --British Journal for the History of Science The book is a museum. A collection of ideas, material objects, and relations collected meticulously and ordered, but allowing the visitors/readers to draw new connections between them and use them for their own purposes in teaching and research. As a well-kept museum, its references are in good order and the notes are a gold mine on the literature of the field. --Medical History If you are not comfortable with pictures of dead human bodies, this may not be ideal bedtime reading. However, the topic is covered sensitively and with due reference to social, cultural, and historical contexts. . . . The many illustrations complement the text, particularly the sections about anatomical images and art depicting the human body in death. Some of the historical photographs are of lower quality, but their inclusion is valuable, as they help bring history alive. . . . As many anatomical museums are not open to the public, this book provides an alternative insight. Mostly fascinating, sometimes disturbing, but very readable, Anatomy Museum will be of interest to human biologists, medical professionals, and historians of medicine, as well as artists. --Biologist Keenly aware of the broader context and making liberal use of other collections in the UK, Hallam shows us how dynamic and diverse a successful collection like this was . . . She guides us beyond the museum to other anatomy spaces, especially the lecture theatre and the dissection room . . . Anatomy Museum is well worth reading. It is impeccably researched, nicely produced and lavishly illustrated. It spurs us to think differently about collections of all kinds, and relationships between the things in them. . . . From papier-mache to plastic, from plastinates to plasticine, there is beauty to be found in the anatomy museum. --Museums Journal

Hallam uses the Anatomy Museum at the University of Aberdeen, UK, to anchor a history of collections of human anatomical remains as 'synoptic mazes'--labyrinthine summations of knowledge. She charts their convoluted chronicles of acquisition, dissection and preservation, weaving in a narrative on the cultural display of death, from ancient ossuaries to plastinated bodies. --Nature For the reviewer, a fan of the history of science in general, particularly the study of anatomy and physiology, it is difficult not to be effusive about this volume . . . This book will be a valuable addition to collections that serve practitioners and historians of the study and treatment of the human body. Recommended. --Choice The book is a museum. A collection of ideas, material objects, and relations collected meticulously and ordered, but allowing the visitors/readers to draw new connections between them and use them for their own purposes in teaching and research. As a well-kept museum, its references are in good order and the notes are a gold mine on the literature of the field. --Medical History This book concerns the post-mortem experience of those patients, or parts of them, as well as the lived experience of the students who studied them. It is as much a history of anatomical education (in which museums played a changing role) as it is of this type of museum itself. It is a peculiar, but ultimately successful, mix of a history of animated display, reviewing how anatomical specimens have been 'brought to life' over a period of several centuries, and a specific social and cultural case study of the Anatomy Museum of Marischal College (Aberdeen), from its origins in the 1830s until its closure in 2009. . . . The author draws on her experience of using the museum, prior to the transfer of the collections elsewhere, and this lavishly illustrated book contains several photographs drawn from the small archival room she discovered there. . . . Innovative. --British Journal for the History of Science If you are not comfortable with pictures of dead human bodies, this may not be ideal bedtime reading. However, the topic is covered sensitively and with due reference to social, cultural, and historical contexts. . . . The many illustrations complement the text, particularly the sections about anatomical images and art depicting the human body in death. Some of the historical photographs are of lower quality, but their inclusion is valuable, as they help bring history alive. . . . As many anatomical museums are not open to the public, this book provides an alternative insight. Mostly fascinating, sometimes disturbing, but very readable, Anatomy Museum will be of interest to human biologists, medical professionals, and historians of medicine, as well as artists. --Biologist Keenly aware of the broader context and making liberal use of other collections in the UK, Hallam shows us how dynamic and diverse a successful collection like this was . . . She guides us beyond the museum to other anatomy spaces, especially the lecture theatre and the dissection room . . . Anatomy Museum is well worth reading. It is impeccably researched, nicely produced and lavishly illustrated. It spurs us to think differently about collections of all kinds, and relationships between the things in them. . . . From papier-mache to plastic, from plastinates to plasticine, there is beauty to be found in the anatomy museum. --Museums Journal

Author Information

Elizabeth Hallam is Director of Cultural History at the University of Aberdeen. Her books include the co-authored Beyond the Body: Death and Social Identity (1999) and Death, Memory and Material Culture (2001).

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