The later Victorian asylum was increasingly dominated by anatomical pathological mental science based on thousands of post-mortems conducted on the dead among captive patient populations.

Dr Joseph Kahn’s Anatomical and Pathological Museum was the nineteenth-century’s best-known and most visited public museum of anatomy.

In his portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1786, the Irish Carver, the Giant’s skeletal feet are clearly visible in the background.

What has happened to the thoughtful, bowler-hatted figure of the forensic pathologist, the spectacular but fallible artist of battered flesh?

The widespread observation that contemporaries were often confused by the organic instability of death and dying, leads us to a second generic theme in this book.

Anatomy, the branch of science concerned with the bodily structure of humans, especially as revealed by dissection and the separation of parts.