Winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (History)
Shortlisted for the Ernest Scott History Prize
Published in Australia as Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection (Melbourne University Press) and in the UK and US as Human Remains: Dissection and its Histories (Yale University Press).
What should happen to the dead? Bone collecting, body snatching and the politics of the trade in human remains is a gothic tale that still haunts contemporary life.
Human Remains examines an era when convicted murderers received the double sentence of both death and dissection, the poor who died in
hospital were routinely turned over
to the surgeons for study, and men traded
in
human remains including those of
Aboriginal people.