The Body Collected in Australia: A History of Human Specimens and the Circulation of Biomedical Knowledge

Abstract

Cover -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- Glossary of medical terms -- Introduction: Bones of contention -- The history of medicine and medical museums in Australia -- 1 Dissecting the culture of anatomy -- Collecting the human body -- The Melbourne Medical School -- The anatomists -- Cadaver poems -- 2 From patient to specimen: Collectors and networks -- Nineteenth-century collecting activity -- Harry Brookes Allen and the collecting network -- Transforming patient into specimen -- 'The battle of the brains': Public views of a clandestine network -- Why did they collect? -- Amateur versus paid collecting -- 3 The anatomy of a museum -- From grotesque body parts to pedagogical tools -- The museum as an encyclopaedia of the body -- Specimens as pedagogical tools -- Private and public anatomy -- 4 Unrealized lives: A collection of foetal specimens -- Medical authority and the foetal specimen -- Specimen collecting and medical discourse -- Foetuses preserved in isolation -- Foetuses preserved in situ -- 5 War pathology specimens -- War specimens and the development of military medicine -- Displaying the collection -- 6 Moving parts: Repatriation and bioethics -- The persistent culture of anatomy -- Moving parts within the context of decolonization -- The Berry Collection -- Moving parts within a changing bioethical climate -- Conclusion: Afterlives -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.