In 1869 two British-trained surgeons, William Crowther and George Stokell, engaged in a serial quest in Hobart Town's General Hospital to obtain the skeleton of the so-called last Tasmanian Aboriginal man. Crowther stole William Lanney's skull from beneath his skin, intending to ship it to the Hunterian Museum at London's Royal College of Surgeons. Stokell resurrected Lanney's body from its grave on behalf of the local Royal Society's museum. A subsequent enquiry revealed to Tasmanians how readily any of them might be turned into subjects for dissection in the colony's main hospital, whose medical men seemed able to appropriate human remains at will. This scandal precipitated the passing of the Anatomy Act. While local parliamentarians used the British Anatomy Act (1832) as their primary reference point for regulating anatomy in the colony, a close reading of the aftermath of these events reveals the specific colonial resonance of the debates. They were entangled in ongoing concerns about the management of Tasmania's premier hospital, and one surgeon/parliamentarian's attempt to gain for independent medical men the most advantageous access to hospital patients, for clinical practice and as subjects for their students to dissect.
...MoreDescription When two surgeons extracted a skull from a corpse to ship to London the scandal precipitated the passing of a regulatory bill modeled after Britain's 1832 Anatomy Act.
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