false 893652 2 <p><i>A Traffic of Dead Bodies</i> enters the sphere of bodysnatching medical students, dissection-room pranks, and anatomical fantasy. It shows how nineteenth-century American physicians used anatomy to develop a vital professional identity, while claiming authority over the living and the dead. It also introduces the middle-class women and men, working people, unorthodox healers, cultural radicals, entrepreneurs, and health reformers who resisted and exploited anatomy to articulate their own social identities and visions.</p><p>The nineteenth century saw the rise of the American medical profession: a proliferation of practitioners, journals, organizations, sects, and schools. Anatomy lay at the heart of the medical curriculum, allowing American medicine to invest itself with the authority of European science. Anatomists crossed the boundary between life and death, cut into the body, reduced it to its parts, framed it with moral commentary, and represented it theatrically, visually, and textually. Only initiates of the dissecting room could claim the privileged healing status that came with direct knowledge of the body. But anatomy depended on confiscation of the dead--mainly the plundered bodies of African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, and the poor. As black markets in cadavers flourished, so did a cultural obsession with anatomy, an obsession that gave rise to clashes over the legal, social, and moral status of the dead. Ministers praised or denounced anatomy from the pulpit; rioters sacked medical schools; and legislatures passed or repealed laws permitting medical schools to take the bodies of the destitute. Dissection narratives and representations of the anatomical body circulated in new places: schools, dime museums, popular lectures, minstrel shows, and sensationalist novels.</p><p>Michael Sappol resurrects this world of graverobbers and anatomical healers, discerning new ligatures among race and gender relations, funerary practices, the formation of the middle-class, and medical professionalization. In the process, he offers an engrossing and surprisingly rich cultural history of nineteenth-century America.</p> 878876 2002 A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America total:8|5:1|4:5|3:2| 8 31 22 1 4 0 false false Fri Mar 28 10:42:31 -0700 2008 Fri Mar 28 10:42:31 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Mon Oct 19 23:13:21 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 23:13:21 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Aug 24 13:32:07 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 24 13:32:07 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Aug 17 18:05:13 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 18:05:13 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Aug 06 17:07:20 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 06 17:07:20 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Mar 21 21:28:51 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 21 21:28:54 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Mar 11 14:17:20 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 11 14:17:20 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Jan 08 18:51:51 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 18:51:56 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Sun Nov 30 10:42:04 -0800 2008 Fri Jul 17 12:14:03 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Nov 12 09:07:13 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 12 09:14:06 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Sat Sep 13 08:17:10 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 13 08:17:10 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Wed Jun 18 21:10:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 18 21:10:00 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Tue May 13 12:46:19 -0700 2008 Tue May 13 12:46:23 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Sun May 11 10:57:00 -0700 2008 Sun May 11 10:57:11 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Fri May 09 11:45:43 -0700 2008 Fri May 09 11:45:47 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Tue Apr 08 21:14:58 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 18 18:27:43 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 18 18:27:43 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Fri Feb 15 15:41:59 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 15 15:41:59 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Sun Jan 27 12:30:41 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 27 12:30:41 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Wed Nov 07 12:45:19 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 07 12:45:19 -0800 2007 4 0 false false Wed Oct 24 05:16:08 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 20:52:45 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 20:52:48 -0700 2007 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=893652