Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract

Rather than assembling a straightforward factual survey of British medical museums, Sam Alberti presents in this wholly admirable volume a notably well-documented account of the philosophical as well as the institutional progress of anatomical (often pathological) collections in his chosen period, with numerous backward glances to its origins in the 1700s and with thoughtful comments on its continuing resonances.Following a scene-setting introduction, Alberti divides his text into five thematic chapters dealing respectively with situating, collecting, preserving, displaying, and viewing pathology, before concluding with a summary that extends his study to the present day, pondering the fate of the medical collections investigated (many of which have indeed vanished from the museum landscape) and touching on current debates surrounding the display and ethical treatment of human tissues.As demanded by such a comprehensive treatment, the author has been led well beyond the aspects of professional practice that articulate his volume to consider the influences wrought on his subjects by changing social attitudes, by the emergence of new disciplinary practices in, for example, the fields of ethnography and archaeology, and by the progress of museums of a more conventional stamp.The ambivalent and fluid status of the anatomical specimen forms both a starting-point for Alberti's inquiry and a moving index of evolving public attitudes towards collections of this kind.The journey of any disembodied organ from a fragment of an identifiable human individual to anonymized and generalized type-specimen-'from him or her to it'-not infrequently was followed by a process of re-identification with the surgeon who had been responsible for its excision and preparation, since in the museum it was

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