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The Anatomy of Robert Knox
Murder, Mad Science and Medical Regulation in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh

A.W. Bates
A.W. Bates read anatomy, embryology and the history of medicine, gaining a PhD from Queen Mary College and an MD from UCL, where he is honorary senior lecturer in pathology. He has taught topographical and pathological anatomy in London for more than 20 years. His first book on medical history, Emblematic Monsters, was published in 2005.

“This volume not only gives us unique insight into the society of early 19th century Scotland, the professional jealousies which existed at the time, and insight into the horrors of the surgery of warfare, but an insight into anatomy as the most important science supporting surgery just before the anaesthetic and antiseptic revolutions. It is entirely appropriate that more than 150 years after his death, anatomy is being reinvented as a study critically important to this generation of undergraduates and postgraduates. The volume tells us a great deal of his strengths and weaknesses, his refusal to conform when this would undermine his principles... Knox is now being restored as one of the most distinguished surgical anatomists in the history of Edinburgh surgery.” From the Foreword by The President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Mr John Orr

Reviews from the British Society for the History of Medicine website (http://www.bshm.org.uk/books.htm)

“This very fully researched book by A. W. Bates give a very full description of the life of Robert Knox, and the times in which he lived. It has a comprehensive bibliography, a detailed index and is well annotated. It will be of immense use to the serious student of medical history.” Dr Ann Ferguson

“The book gives a detailed, thoughtful account of the life of Robert Knox from his birth in 1791 until his death in 1862, a period in which new, radical ideas were in the air. Anatomists interested in the higher, philosophical or transcendental level of their subject were grappling with the problem of the formation of new species independent of design or providence and from an early stage Knox was attracted to the subject. During his military service as a hospital assistant he was posted to Waterloo then the Cape of Good Hope where he developed a lifelong interest in comparative anatomy and the races of man. Later Knox studied anatomy in Paris where he was influenced by the theories of Geoffroy and Cuvier. In Edinburgh Knox began to teach and write and, eventually, took over an anatomy school. He was a brilliant lecturer. He taught the theory of a common vertebrate plan to medical students and interspersed his talk and demonstration of descriptive anatomy with a discussion of comparative anatomy, embryology and the transcendental (a kind of nature mysticism). Dissection was anticipated to give information on the origins and inter-relationships of animals and man, and interest became overwhelming. Much later Knox was portrayed as a doctor who whipped up such enthusiasm for anatomy that it became ‘a science run mad’. Certainly between 1826 and1834 the average number of students in Knox's class was 335; students paid an additional fee to be guaranteed ‘subjects’ to dissect. Inevitably Burke and Hare became a supplier of bodies to the school. The scandal of the Westport murders of 1828–9 and his delight in witty but scathing comments on the work of his contemporaries contributed to the failure of Knox to obtain a University appointment. The passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act and Knox's opposition to its implementation led eventually to the decline of his anatomy school. The centre of anatomy teaching moved from Edinburgh to London. Knox moved too and in London he turned to public lecturing and writing, including major works on the races of man, on art and anatomy, the history of transcendental anatomy and a manual of human anatomy.
… T hroughout the book Alan Bates sets the scene of contemporary life. The reader is introduced to life in Edinburgh, to the leading anatomists of the day, French, Scottish and English, to current theories of the formation of new species and, finally, to Darwin. Although Knox, now near the end of his life, never accepted Darwin’s evolutionary theory he stopped writing about transcendental anatomy. A sense of the complex personality of Knox develops, ambitious, gifted and flawed – capable of deep love for his wife and children and zeal for his subject, anatomy, but also of hiding his ‘socially inferior’ family and of ignoring the mathematics of the supply of bodies. Alan Bates draws on numerous sources, 59 publications by Knox are included in the bibliography, in describing the contribution of Robert Knox to anatomy, both descriptive and philosophical, as his reputation as a leading surgical anatomist is being restored. Those interested in the history of human anatomy, in social history and in anthropology will find a wealth of information within.” Dr Barbara Hawgood


Robert Knox is now remembered chiefly as the Edinburgh doctor who dissected corpses supplied by Burke and Hare. His contemporaries knew him as the most celebrated anatomist in Britain, the author of a controversial book on race, and a radical natural philosopher with revolutionary ideas, who taught a generation of medical students that species and races were produced by the operation of biological laws, independent of design or providence. Though he did not achieve the theoretical breakthrough he hoped for, his writings offered a challenging alternative to Darwinism that anticipated later theories of rapid evolution.
… This academic biography is the first to examine the influence of Knox’s radical upbringing, Parisian training and ethnological studies in the Cape Colony on the development of his ‘higher’ anatomy, which traced the multifarious forms of the animal kingdom to an ideal body plan supposedly common to all. New evidence is presented that the subsequent decline in his career, often attributed to the murder for dissection scandal, was a consequence of his opposition to the 1832 Anatomy Act and his refusal to comply with state regulation of anatomy schools. His uncompromising position is shown to have inspired the portrayal of anatomy in fiction – where Knox appears more often than any other British doctor – as a savage and ungovernable science.
… The book will appeal to all those interested in the far-reaching influence of Knox’s anatomy on nineteenth-century medicine, evolutionary theory, aesthetics, physical anthropology, and the representation of anatomical science in popular culture.

List of Illustrations, Foreword & Acknowledgements Introduction chapter one The Darling Boy of the Family, 1791–1810 chapter two A Beautiful but Seductive Science, 1810–1814 chapter three Hospital Assistant, 1815–1820 chapter four Parisian Anatomy, 1821–1822 chapter five Museum Medicine, 1823–1825 chapter six Knox Primus et Incomparabilis, 1825–1828 chapter seven The West Port Murders, 1828–1829 chapter eight A Nation of Cannibals chapter nine The Most Popular Teacher in Our Metropolis, 1830–1836 chapter ten A Scandalous Monopoly, 1836–1840 chapter eleven Nature’s High Priest, 1840–1844 chapter twelve Popular Anatomy, 1845–1848 chapter thirteen The Races of Men, 1848–1851 chapter fourteen A Great Scheme of Nature chapter fifteen Distrust Your Genius, 1851–1855 chapter sixteen The Hideous Interior chapter seventeen Organic Harmonies, 1855–1862 chapter eighteen Science Run Mad Notes Bibliography Index

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