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

(Hardback)

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Offering an insight into 19th- and early 20th-century medical school dissecting rooms and anatomy museums, this book explores how collected human remains have shaped western biomedical knowledge and attitudes towards the body over the past 200 years. Focusing on specimens collected in Australia, Pacitti asks how and why anatomists and medical students obtained human body parts, and explores the role Australia played in the global narrative of western medical development. Interrogating the relationship between colony and metropole in the circulation of knowledge, it shows how Australia formed a distinct identity as a nation; wanting to conform to established norms in Britain and overseas, but simultaneously pushing against them. Pacitti sheds new light on our understanding of western medical networks, fresh insights into the ongoing challenges historic specimen collections pose, and reveals how these collections remain active pedagogical tools in the present day. The Body Collected in Colonial Australia is a cultural history of collectors and the collected that deepens our understanding of the ways the living have used the dead to comprehend the intricacies of the human body in illness and health.

Author Bio

Eugenia Pacitti is an independent historian of medicine based in Australia. She currently works in collection management, and her interests encompass specimen collection, medical education and professional networks in late 19th and early 20th century Australia. Her writing has appeared in Social History of Medicine and The Conservation.