Reviews

‘Human Remains is ethnographic history at its detailed, dramatic and disturbing best. MacDonald imbues the unwitting subjects of the 19th-century dissection trade with a degree of dignity, showing us something meaningful of their lives as well as their after-lives on slab and in the pickling jar. She also anatomises the anatomists – their motives, their vanities and their crimes. She bridges the imaginative gulf between their world and ours, posing disturbing questions about the origins of modern medicine and continuing conflicts over the rights of the dead. MacDonald’s consummate skill as a writer and innovation as a researcher combine to produce an extremely satisfying and thought-provoking reading experience.’
Judges of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (History)

‘Human Remains … sparks and scorns and spins you around … Though MacDonald’s approach is studious, her book is never weighted down by its scholarship. Her arguments are ornamented by a richness of esoteric historical nuggets … MacDonald is that rare and precious commodity: a crack historian with a taste for the bizarre.’
Mary Roach, The New York Times Book Review

‘Like a good Agatha Christie murder mystery, this is a tale you will not want to put down until you have finished it.’
Donald Trunkey, New England Journal of Medicine

‘Fresh, daring, and appealingly provocative.’
John Harley Warner, Yale University

‘This book is full of good stories well told, and witty analysis. MacDonald’s sensitivity to slippages of language and ethics makes it a treat.’
Ruth Richardson, Lancet

‘This intriguing history is a nuanced and subtle inquiry into the politics and morality of the dissecting room.’
Fiona Capp, Age

‘This book is compellingly readable … it depicts for the first time what occurred in the name of medicine and science in the comparative colonial isolation of Tasmania. A necessary and immeasurably important book.’
Christopher Bantick, Weekend Australian

‘Human Remains is not just the story of skeletons, cadavers, and skulls; it is a story where the dead have names … I read and reread this book. It has made me ask new sets of questions, informed my criticisms of social practices related to death and dying, and stimulated further interest in a part of history I’d been largely unaware of. Further, I simply enjoyed reading the book. Its stories seem stranger than the best fiction.’
Charlton McIlwain, Death Studies

‘Fascinating … MacDonald nicely situates the colonists’ exchange of bones for favors and recognition from British scientists within Victorian debates about race, origins and evolution … based on an excellent array of archival and primary sources.’
Susan Lawrence, Isis

‘totally absorbing’
Tina Mathews, Bulletin of the Royal College of Pathologists

‘MacDonald is skilled at giving rich accounts of people’s lives and the ways in which they intertwine … this is a beautifully written and intriguing history.’
Helen Blackman, Journal of the American Medical Association

‘I highly recommend this book not only for someone with an interest in the ethical use of human remains for scientific purposes, but also for anyone who would enjoy a very readable murder mystery.’
Laurette Geldenhuys, Canadian Bulletin of the History of Medicine

‘an important contribution to the history of the uses of the dead to the living … MacDonald has enriched our understanding.’
Nadia Durbach, American Historical Review

‘A beautifully written and intriguing history … very thought-provoking.’
 Anne Andermann, Canadian Medical Association Journal

‘By compassionately narrating the stories of people who became objects of dissection … MacDonald resurrects them from the shadows of history … She lets us understand the complex motives of surgeons and anatomists, as well as the public protests against perceived scandalous behaviour.’
Eva Ahrén, Journal of Social History

‘in the best tradition of microhistories … a tour de force of research and historical reconstruction.’
Anita Guerrini, Canadian Journal of History