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Edited by David E. Balk Art,Science, and the ExquisiteCorpseReviewed by Charlton McIlwainPublished online: 13 Feb 2007.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Edited byDAVID E. BALK

Art, Science, and the Exquisite Corpse

A review of Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection byHelen MacDonald. Melbourne, Australia: University of MelbournePress, 2005. 220 pp. (ISBN 0-522851-57-6). $34.95. Reviewed byCharlton McIlwain.

Helen MacDonald is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University ofMelbourne’s Australian Centre. Her research interests lie in the culturalhistory of medicine. Specifically, she explores how medical scientists havehistorically negotiated access to human remains. She wrote Bridging theGap: Assisting Early School Leavers to Make the Transition to Work (Brotherhoodof St. Laurence, 1999).

Charlton McIlwain is an Assistant Professor of Culture & Communi-cation at New York University. His work centers on the intersection ofdeath, culture, and public discourse. He is the author of two books on suchtopics including, When Death Goes Pop: Death, Media, & the Remaking of Com-munity (Peter Lang, 2005) and Death in Black and White: Death, Ritual, andFamily Ecology (Hampton Press, 2003). Most recently he’s been involvedas an expert witness in a legal case involving the abuses of human remains(Odessa Lewis, . . .. Susie Cropper, et al., Plaintiffs vs. Woodlawn Memorial Park;Evergreen Memorial Care, Inc., et al., Defendants).

It is true that a book cannot be judged by its cover. But onedoesn’t get much further into the book Human Remains before one’sinterest is captivated by author Helen MacDonald’s brief framingof the work’s content. The book begins with an introduction thatplaces a host of the deceased and their corpses at the center of sev-eral intersecting problems and questions relevant to a number ofdisciplines from the medical and forensic sciences on one end ofthe spectrum to popular culture and media=cultural studies onthe other. The introduction begins with a contemporary moment,

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Death Studies, 31: 261–274, 2007Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0748-1187 print/1091-7683 onlineDOI: 10.1080/07481180601152633

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the story of one Dr. Gunther Von Gangens who, in 2002, per-formed the first public dissection in London since 1832.

MacDonald uses this brief narrative as a starting point to returnto her primary subject of investigation: the history of the practice ofdissection—mainly public, in some way—in 19th century Britain,and the exportation of the practice to British colonial territories,specifically, Australia and the people known as ‘‘Tasmanians’’ orAboriginals. The remaining six chapters of the book are historicalnarratives—‘‘episodes,’’ as MacDonald puts it—that chart thesepractices by medical men as a way of addressing some key issuesset out in the introduction: the blurred distinctions between scienceand art; the progression of medical knowledge; the subject–objectrelationship between the corpse and medical practitioners; crimeand punishment; and the making of racial science.

Chapter 1 describes the way in which medical scientists viewedtheir companionship with the dead as the most efficacious means ofdeveloping medical knowledge, thereby justifying the need forhuman corpses to be used for dissection and other forms of anatom-ical research. It focuses on several classes of people made availableor holding particular import for these medical endeavors—largelycriminals, women, and humans with distinctive physical features.MacDonald details the legal and illegal options medical menavailed themselves to access human remains, and the way in whichindividuals and institutions justified these practices as ‘‘a kind ofnecessary Inhumanity,’’ (p. 28) to quote the subject of one ofMacDonald’s narratives.

Chapter 2 tells the story of Mary McLauchlan, one of thesewomen that became an object of dissection after being publiclyexecuted. It details the spectacle of her execution, the display ofher corpse to the eyes of the general public, and the more ‘‘scien-tific’’ spectacle made of her body in the subsequent public dissec-tion in front of a host of medical personnel. A back story isprovided, detailing McLauchlan’s criminal conviction years earlierin Glasgow, Scotland, her transport with other female prisoners toa penal colony in a place called Van Diemen’s Land, and her trialfor the murder of her child. The chapter deals largely with the wayin which dissection was seen as an additional measure of punish-ment for certain classes of criminals.

Chapter 3 sets up the narratives of the remaining chapters,where MacDonald turns her attention to another cast of tragic

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characters ‘‘whose bodies attracted the curious gaze of nineteenth-century medical men’’ (p. 87)—the Aboriginals of Van Diemen’sLand, later referred to as Tasmania. It is here that the book directsour attention toward the way in which the seemingly stark racialdifferences of Aboriginals fulfilled these medical men’s obsessionwith exploring the nature of human anatomical difference. Chap-ter 4 focuses on another noted figure, a medical man turned physi-cal anthropologist who routinely ‘‘robbed’’ graves across the worldin search of skeletons and skulls to fuel his speculations about thevarieties of racial differences that existed in human beings, cata-loguing not just physical differences but what was purported tobe the character differences between members of the human spe-cies. MacDonald details another purpose for which humanremains—Aboriginal in particular—were used, that is, to be circu-lated as gifts in a new economy of exchange between medical colo-nists and those colonized in both life and death. Several otherprominent figures in this new political economy of human remainsare detailed in the chapter.

Chapter 5, the last substantive chapter of the book, tells thetragic story of a whaler, William Lanney, who was thought to markthe event of being the ‘‘last Tasmanian man’’ (p. 137). Given thesocial and political economy of human remains detailed in the pre-vious chapter, Lanney’s remains were seen as a ‘‘rare collectible’’(p. 146), for it marked the supposed extinction of a race (whetherit occurred naturally or by design was a subject of debate). Thetheft of Lanney’s body from the hospital through curious devicesbecame a scandal for public fascination and scrutiny, stimulatinga number of justifications by medical men about the use of hisand other bodies used to satisfy the interests of dissection by medi-cal men and procurers and collectors alike. Such justifications—byscience, medicine, and Christianity—emerged as ways of dealingwith a host of moral, ethical, and legal issues brought on by theincessant demands for human remains, as well as one of the rea-sons that such modes of obtaining human remains and showcasingthem in public dissections became virtually a thing of the past—until, that is, the work of VonGunther in 2002. Chapter 6 is an epi-logue of sorts that ferrets out the varieties of implications that arisefrom the long history of the uses and abuses of human remains.

Human Remains makes a significant contribution to the broadfield of death studies in a number of ways. First, the book represents,

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in my view, the best kind of history. This is to say, it illuminates thepast as well as the present, weaving implicit arguments within a net-work of complex and detailed narratives of a time in human historythat is, in many ways, not unlike narratives of our contemporaryworld. The narratives MacDonald highlights provide a depth ofunderstanding of the circumstances and contexts of the times withwhich she is concerned, allowing the reader to visualize, empathize,and sympathize with the myriad of problems associated with theuses of human remains. We’ve long known the stories that comprisethe history of science and the elevation of scientific knowledge, ofthe horror stories of crime and punishments as they were metedout in 19th-century Europe, and the arguments surrounding theconstruction of race, social, and racial Darwinism, and the variedjustifications for European colonization. MacDonald tells a story lar-gely missing—that of the role of the dead and the way that scientificknowledge was borne on the backs of unwitting and unwilling sub-jects objectified in death and subjected to the cruelest of treatment.

One of the strengths of this book is not only the untold storythat gets told here, but the particular way that MacDonald choosesto tell it. It is not written with the objective veneer characteristic ofthe very kinds of scientific endeavors she details. It tells the storyfrom the point of the view of the medical men who indulged them-selves with bodies bequeathed, stolen, or institutionally granted tothem and inextricably links them to the very remains they wereforced to objectify in order to perform their acts of mutilation.MacDonald tells all sides of the story to be sure; yet she makes aconscious choice (and risk, to be sure) to represent and give voiceto these dead on whose backs scientific discoveries, professionalreputations, and financial fortunes were made. One can clearlysee MacDonald’s struggle, as if she felt a real burden to resurrectthe dead to the level of humanity they were denied in life anddeath, the stories of those wrongfully accused or punished forthe mere crime of having no family or friends to speak for theirremains, or being born with a skin color that aroused the curiositiesof Europeans obsessed with tales of racial purity and exertingscientific authority. Human Remains is not just the story of skeletons,cadavers, and skulls; it is a story where the dead have names, andbecause of this aspect of telling the story MacDonald draws herreader into the intense moral and ethical dilemmas highlightedthroughout this book. To put it simply, the book forgoes the

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excesses of hindsight moralizing so often found in historicalaccounts. The mere stories she chooses to tell and the way she tellsthem allow the reader to face these dilemmas without heavy-handed berating from the author. The persons whose stories shetells are allowed to speak largely for themselves, and MacDonaldrarely makes explicit arguments about the implications of theevents she writes about.

MacDonald’s writing holds relevance for scholars fromdiverse fields. For those interested in media studies, the bookdemonstrates the way in which the tragic circumstances of humanlife become the fodder for entertainment. Even something as seem-ingly repulsive as a human dissection captures the gaze not only ofpractitioners and specialists, but of onlookers interested simply inwhat taboos they can become witness to. Her history illustrateshow even science often receives validation through showmanship,providing a visual spectacle that connotes a rhetoric of legitimacyfor the practice and its practitioners. For those interested in the‘‘science’’ and sociology of race, this book provides an interestingand detailed look at some of the underlying motivations that stimu-lated the kinds of racial reasoning that continues to be part of socialscientific discourse. In a day in which the concept of race seems tohave as much traction as ever—in the academy and the generalpopulation—this book gives us a sense of how the very conceptof race and notions of human difference seem so hollow whenviewed from the point of view of those who were the subjects ofsuch ‘‘discoveries,’’ why they were chosen, and how the investiga-tions into their anatomical differences were sullied by motivationsthat were anything but an expression of goodwill toward the wholeof humanity.

Ethicists and political scientists too can find much value in thisbook inasmuch as it deals with the institutionalization of theseforms of medical practice. To what degree is, can, and shouldscientific endeavors be restrained by the state and various formsof public policy? What role does the state have in safeguardinghuman remains? What parameters might we place around ‘‘pro-gress?’’ The range of material in the book won’t be lost on count-less others as well, from anthropologists to physical scientists toreligious scholars—and of course, historians.

When I first began reading Human Remains I had just finishedmy own book that focused on representations of death and dying

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in popular entertainment and the uses of new communication tech-nologies in death-related professional industries. I’d also becomeinvolved in a legal case in California that had to do with the des-ecration of a number human remains at a cemetery in a largelyAfrican American community. It was a short time later that Ifinally went to the latest-touted ‘‘medical art’’ exhibit—Bodies.The way I’ve begun to continue to re-conceptualize my own workon death and media, my advice in the legal case, and my experi-ences of the exhibit were all influenced, in a positive way, by myhaving read and re-read this book. It has made me ask new setsof questions, informed my criticisms of social practices related todeath and dying, and stimulated further interest in a part of historyI’d been largely unaware of. Further, I simply enjoyed reading thebook. Its stories seem stranger than the best fiction. I’ve hadoccasion to use excepts from it in a couple of classes by this point,and my students have largely praised it for its depth of insights andilluminations into an area that seems to be so off-putting but oftenis the source of intense fascination.

How We Die: Theory vs. Reality

A review of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Facing Death. A film byStefan Haupt (2002). 57 minutes. Brooklyn, NY: First Run=IcarusIcarus Films. Reviewed by David Meagher.

Stephen Haupt was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He came to the UnitedStates as an exchange student. He now works as an independent filmand theater director.

David Meagher, Emeritus Professor and Founding Director of theGraduate Program in Thanatology at Brooklyn College of the City Univer-sity of New York, was President of the Association for Death Education andCounseling (ADEC), received the ADEC Death Educator Award, andsince July 2005 has served as Chair of the ADEC Test Committee.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a name synonymous with the five stagesof dying (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) diedon August 24th, 2004. Prior to her death, a filmed biography of herlife was published. This film documents her life from birth to just priorto her death. There are interviews with Elisabeth during her final daysas she lived in seclusion in the Arizona desert. Most of the presen-tation is a documentary of her life up to the time of her dying. It is

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