William Burke death mask, National Portrait Gallery

 History of Medicine  No Responses »
Mar 242017
 

William Burke death maskLibrary, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh EH2 1JD

The advocates of the ‘science’ of phrenology claimed that the brain was composed of a number of organs, including organs of ‘destructiveness’ or ‘benevolence’ and ‘hope’. They believed that the character of a person could be determined from the shape of their skull, which mirrored the development of these organs. They were therefore very interested in collecting casts of the heads of remarkable people, whether geniuses or criminals. This is just such as cast of the head of the notorious murderer, William Hare, taken after his execution in 1829.

Entry to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery is free.

L0022893 George Combe, names of phrenological organs, 1836 Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Names of the phrenological organs Outlines of phrenology George A. Combe Published: 1836 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The phrenological organs, from George Combe, Outlines of Phrenology (1836).

Portrait of William Burke by George Andrew Lutenor; a portrait painter who was also one of the jurors at William Hare's trial, 1829.

Portrait of William Burke by George Andrew Lutenor; a portrait painter who was also one of the jurors at William Hare’s trial, 1829.

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Robert Knox’s anatomy school

 History of Medicine, History of Science  No Responses »
Mar 042016
 

10 Surgeon’s Square, Edinburgh EH1 1LZ

surgeon's square

At number 10 Surgeon’s Square Robert Knox ran his extra-mural anatomy school from the death of its original proprietor, John Barclay, in 1826 until 1844. Knox bought the bodies of many of the victims of Burke and Hare. He was a flamboyant character, whose controversial views made him popular with his students. Although he was found innocent of any involvement in the murders, the scandal ruined his career. Robert Grant, who taught invertebrate zoology in the same school, was an early evolutionary thinker and friend of Charles Darwin while a student in Edinburgh in 1825-27.

No public access.

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