Reviews

‘In 1904, an article in the Daily Mail described an investigation in Adelaide into Dr William Ramsay Smith, who was alleged to have sent dissected bodies to Arthur Keith at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum. The article reported an anonymous Harley Street surgeon saying such traffic was hardly surprising given the perpetual shortage of corpses, which resulted from “the squeamishness of the British public”, with its “false, mawkish sentiment”. A clerk working in the Anatomy Inspector’s office noticed the article, cut it out and pasted it into a scrapbook, where a century later it was noticed by Helen MacDonald, a historian with an eye for such details. Possessing the Dead: the artful science of anatomy uses a wealth of such information to investigate carefully and sensitively the aftermath of the 1832 Anatomy Act in Britain and Australia’.
Times Literary Supplement

‘MacDonald is a writer who is reclaiming history as a literary genre, all the while maintaining a high standard of research. Possessing the Dead can perhaps be described as creative non-fiction’.
Australian Book Review

‘MacDonald is a fine scholar, up to speed with all the fashionable issues of academe – racism, colonialism, and the like – in this book on the way medical schools acquired corpses in Scotland, Australia and England … there is the anatomy of a film in this oddly engaging book’.
Weekend Australian

'The research is remarkable - details were teased from a century's worth of records'.
Good Reading

'A rare combination of rigorous historical research and Poe-esque gothic horror ... Possessing the Dead contributes substantially to the history of British and Australian science. Meticulously researched and vividly written, it will interest not only historians of science, medicine and technology, but also all those concerned with social justice, power disparities, and the the abuses, past and present, too often committed in the name of science'.
Historical Records of Australian Science

'Sometimes an exceedingly well-written book can suck a reader into the most outrageously esoteric and exotic subjects. Surely Gavin Pretor-Pinney's The Cloudspotter's Guide is one such book, as is Montaillou by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. Possessing the Dead deserves to be ranked in similar company. Helen MacDonald … is an indefatigably painstaking and curious historian … Her historical dissections are exacting and thorough,  but also smart and compassionate … She can fascinate a reader with stories of Truganini's skin, a deserted railway station in 1903, or the cadaver of an Aboriginal cricketer, Charles Rose. Every story makes or buttresses a serious, thoughtful, intellectually consequent point. Here, the dead are given their due.'
Canberra Times

‘The trade in bodies and the struggle to regulate it is the subject of Helen MacDonald’s fascinating and spooky story. MacDonald … writes with the verve and pace of a crime writer’.
Sydney Morning Herald

'Recent scholarship has transformed the history of anatomy ... Helen MacDonald moves to the bleeding heart of the fray: the actual workings of Britain's 1832 Anatomy Act, juxtaposing its victors, the anatomical establishment, and its victims ... Possessing the Dead belongs sequarely in the historiography of contested bodies, and should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand new directions in the history of anatomy'.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine

'Some of the deceptions practiced make for exciting reading, and in this MacDonald is expert. However, she is just as expert in demonstrating that the excitement is peppered at almost every point by tragi-comedy ... Possessing the Dead is not only a fascinating read but also a penetrating insight into the ways in which legal niceties can be contorted and a respectable profession can indulge in deceitful practices'.
Clinical Anatomy

‘Excellently and thoroughly researched, this book is an entertaining and macabre jaunt down the memory lane of surgery … the machinations of complicit universities, legislators, anatomy inspectors and grave robbers come to life in an engaging
manner’.
M/C Reviews

'MacDonald's writing style is so captivating that readers can be forgiven for thinking that they are momentarily transported back in time, engrossed in the sinister reality of deceit, murder and corruption'.
Melbourne Historical Review