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Thomas L. Muinzer
Enter John Hunter
During the final weeks of his life Byrne become fearfully aware that
Georgian Britain’s preeminent surgeon and anatomist John Hunter was
eager to get hold of his corpse for dissection and probable display. A
Scotsman who had moved to London in 1748 to work at his brother
William’s bourgeoning anatomical school, Hunter had begun to turn out
a large body of important medical research. Much of his method was
founded on meticulous experimentation on his array of anatomical specimens.
Hunter practiced and taught anatomy in an era where the dissection of
the human corpse was a social taboo and widely feared practice. The
medical establishment therefore found it extremely difficult to secure
sufficient quantities of cadavers for the purposes of research and teaching. Thus the trade of ‘the Resurrectionists’ flourished, that is, the illegal
practice of robbing corpses from graves and selling them covertly or
under false pretences to the surgeons (Richardson 1987).
Many surgeons were unaware of the unlawful manner in which the corpses they were purchasing had been obtained; however Hunter – a rough,
unceremonious and fiery character – was considerably more pro-active
in his dealings with the underworld than most, as his biographer Wendy
Moore elaborates (Moore 2006: 25-26):
Hunter… had gone further than any other anatomist of his day in
his connections with the Georgian underworld. Since embarking on
anatomy as an enthusiastic youth, Hunter had fostered the closest
and friendliest of relations with the so-called Resurrectionists; he
was renowned for offering the highest price to ensure a regular supply of dissection material for himself and hi 27GVFV