Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found

by Frances Larson

  Thomas Hodgkin, ‘The Progress of Ethnology’, Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, vol. 1, 1848, pp. 27–45.

  Lucile E. Hoyme, ‘Physical Anthropology and Its Instruments: An Historical Study’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 9, no. 4, 1953, pp. 408–430.

  James Hunt, ‘Introductory Address on the Study of Anthropology’, Anthropological Review 1, 1863, pp. 1–20.

  Paul Jorion, ‘The Downfall of the Skull’, RAIN, no. 48, 1982, pp. 8–11.

  James Aitken Meigs, ‘Hints to Craniographers’, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. 10, 1858, pp. 1–6.

  George W. Stocking Jr., Victorian Anthropology, New York: Free Press, 1987.

  ‘A Manual of Ethnological Inquiry’, Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, vol. 3, 1854, pp. 193–208.

  Early cranial collections:

  E. H. Ackerknecht and H. V. Vallois, Franz Joseph Gall, Inventor of Phrenology and His Collection, Madison: University of Wisconsin Medical School, 1956.

  Samuel J. M. M. Alberti, Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

  Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (trans. Thomas Bendyshe), The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1865, Boston: Longwood Press, 1978.

  Nélia Dias, ‘Nineteenth-Century French Collections of Skulls and the Cult of Bones’, Nuncius, vol. 27, 2012, pp. 330–347.

  Sara K. Keckeisen, The Grinning Wall: History, Exhibition, and Application of the Hyrtl Skull Collection at the Mütter Museum, MA thesis, Seton Hall University, 2012.

  Meigs, ‘Hints to Craniographers’, 1858, op. cit.

  Wendy Moore, The Knife Man: Blood, Body-Snatching and the Birth of Modern Surgery, London: Bantam Press, 2005.

  Samuel George Morton:

  Barnard Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica, 1865, op. cit.

  Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors: Race, Science and America’s Unburied Dead, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

  Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 2nd ed., New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1981.

  S. G. Morton, Crania Americana: Or a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America, London: Simpkin Marshall, 1839.

  S. G. Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca: or, Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from Anatomy, History and Monuments, Philadelphia: J. Penington, 1844.

  S.G. Morton, Catalogue of Skulls of Man and the Inferior Animals, in the Collection of Samuel George Morton, Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, 1849.

  The Open Research Scan Archive website at http://plum.museum.upenn.edu/

  ~orsa/Specimens.html

  Joseph Barnard Davis:

  Barnard Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica, 1865, op. cit.

  Joseph Barnard Davis, Thesaurus Craniorum. Catalogue of the Skulls of the Various Races of Man, in the Collection of Joseph Barnard Davis, printed for the subscribers, London, 1867.

  John Beddoe, Memories of Eighty Years, Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1910.

  ‘Joseph Barnard Davis, M.D., F.R.S., Hanley’, British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 1066, 1881, p. 901.

  ‘The Barnard Davis Collection of Skulls’, British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 990, 1879, p. 996.

  ‘Catalogue of Human Crania &c in the Collection of Joseph Barnard Davis’, manuscript catalogue, Royal College of Surgeons archives, MS0283/1, The Joseph Barnard David Papers.

  Letters between Barnard Davis and Sir William Flowers, the curator at the Royal College of Surgeons, Royal College of Surgeons archives, RCS_MUS//2/4/92, Museum Letter Book, Series 2, Volume 4, 1878–1883.

  Collecting heads in the field:

  Andrew Apter, ‘Africa, Empire and Anthropology: A Philological Exploration of Anthropology’s Heart of Darkness’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 28, 1999, pp. 577–598.

  Harrison, Dark Trophies, 2012, op. cit.

  Elise Juzda, ‘Skulls, Science, and the Spoils of War: Craniological Studies at the United States Army Medical Museum, 1868–1900’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 40, 2009, pp. 156–167.

  A.H. Quiggin, Haddon the Headhunter. A Short Sketch of the Life of A.C. Haddon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942.

  James Urry, ‘Headhunters and Body-Snatchers’, Anthropology Today, vol. 5, no. 5, 1989, pp. 11–13.

  The Seligmans’ experiences are recorded by Brenda Seligman in her field diary for 18 and 19 March 1912, kept in the archives at the London School of Economics, Seligman collection, file 1/4/5.

  Dissection and the poor:

  Zoe Crossland, ‘Acts of Estrangement. The Post-Mortem Making of Self and Other’, Archaeological Dialogues, vol. 16, no. 1, 2009, pp. 102–125.

  Fabian, The Skull Collectors, 2010, op. cit.

  Megan J. Highet, ‘Body Snatching and Grave Robbing: Bodies for Science’, History and Anthropology, vol. 16, no. 4, 2006, pp. 415–440.

  Keckeisen, The Grinning Wall, 2012, op. cit.

  Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, 1988, op. cit.

  Ishi:

  Crossland, ‘Acts of estrangement’, 2009, op. cit.

  Robert F. Heizer and Theodora Kroeber, Ishi, the Last Yahi: A Documentary History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

  Stuart Speaker, ‘Repatriating the Remains of Ishi. Smithsonian Institution Report and Recommendation’, in Karl Kroeber and Clifton B. Kroeber (eds.), Ishi in Three Centuries, Lincoln: Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska, 2003.

  ‘The Repatriation of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian’, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, website at anthropology.si.edu/repatriation/projects/ishi.htm

  Human remains, identity and museum collections:

  Dias, ‘French Collections of Skulls’, 2012, op. cit.

  Kirsten Grieshaber, ‘German Museum Returning Namibian Skulls’, Associated Press, 30 September 2011.

  Laura Peers, ‘On the Treatment of Dead Enemies’, 2009, op. cit.

  Peter Popham, ‘Bring Us the Head of King Badu Bonsu, said Ghana – and the Dutch said yes’, Independent, 25 July 2009.

  ‘Homes for Bones’, Nature, editorial, Vol. 501, No. 462, 25 September2013.

  www.nolombroso.org

  www.tepapa.govt.nz/About us/Repatriation/toimoko

  Hrdlička, Howells and twentieth-century craniometry:

  Marina Elliott and Mark Collard, ‘Going Head to Head: FORDISC vs. CRANID in the Determination of Ancestry from Craniometric Data’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 147 (S54), p. 139.

  Jonathan Friedlaender, William White Howells 1908–2005: A Biographical Memoir, Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2007.

  Lauren Kallenberger and Varsha Pilbrow, ‘Using CRANID to Test the Population Affinity of Known Crania’, Journal of Anatomy, vol. 221, 2012, pp. 459–464.

  John H. Relethford, ‘Race and Global Patterns in Phenotypic Variation’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 139, 2009, pp. 16–22.

  Christopher M. Stojanowski and Julie K. Euber, ‘Technical Note: Comparability of Hrdlička’s Catalog of Crania data based on measurement landmark definitions’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 146, 2011, pp. 143–149.

  The William W. Howells Craniometric Data Set is available at http://web.utk.edu/~auerbach/HOWL.htm

  Chapter 7: Dissected Heads

  Personal accounts of dissecting human cadavers:

  Lindsey Fitzharris, ‘Mangling the Dead: Dissection, Past and Present’, Lancet, vol. 381, no. 9861, pp. 108–109.

  Bill Hayes, The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy, New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2009.

  Christine Montross, Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab, London: Penguin Books, 2007.

  Medical student’s blog at http://ahyesplans.wordpress.com/2012/09/

  17/in-which-i-became-scarred-for-life-tales-from-the-anatomy-lab/r />
  Medical student’s blog at http://sudden-death-academic.blogspot.co.uk

  /2010/03/once-again-anatomy-lab-is-coolest.html

  Studies of the medical student experience:

  Anja Boeckers et al., ‘How Can We Deal with Mental Distress in the Dissection Room? An Evaluation of the Need for Psychological Support’, Annals of Anatomy, vol. 192, 2010, pp. 366–372.

  N. Leboulanger, ‘First Cadaver Dissection: Stress, Preparation, and Emotional Experience’, European Annals of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Diseases, vol. 128, 2011, pp. 175–183.

  Heidi Lempp, ‘Undergraduate Medical Education: A Transition from Medical Student to Pre-Registration Dcotor’, doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2004.

  Heidi K. Lempp, ‘Perceptions of Dissection by Students in One Medical School: Beyond Learning About Anatomy. A Qualitative Study’, Medical Education, vol. 39, 2005, pp. 318–325.

  Helen Martyn et al., ‘Medical Students’ Responses to the Dissection of the Heart and Brain: A Dialogue on the Seat of the Soul’, Clinical Anatomy, vol. 25, 2012, pp. 407–413.

  R. E. O’Carroll et al., ‘Assessing the Emotional Impact of Cadaver Dissection on Medical Students’, Medical Education, vol. 36, 2002, pp. 550–554.

  Thelma A. Quince et al., ‘Student Attitudes Toward Cadaveric Dissection at a UK Medical School’, Anatomical Sciences Education, vol. 4, 2011, pp. 200–207.

  Daniel A. Segal, ‘A Patient so Dead: American Medical Students and Their Cadavers’, Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1, 1988, pp. 17–25.

  The culture of the operating theatre:

  H. M. Collins, ‘Dissecting Surgery: Forms of Life Depersonalized’, Social Studies of Science, vol. 24, no. 2, 1994, pp. 311–333.

  Sky Gross, ‘Biomedicine Inside Out: An Ethnography of Brain Surgery’, Sociology of Health and Illness, vol. 34, no. 8, 2012, pp. 1170–1183.

  Stefan Hirschauer, ‘The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery’, Social Studies of Science, vol. 21, no. 2, 1991, pp. 279–319.

  Dissecting family members:

  Habib Beary, ‘India doctor to dissect father’s body’, BBC News website, 8 November 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11710741

  Frederic W. Hafferty, ‘Cadaver Stories and the Emotional Socialization of Medical Students’, Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, vol. 29, no. 4, 1988, pp. 344–356.

  Lynda Payne, ‘“With Much Nausea, Loathing, and Foetor”: William Harvey, Dissection, and Dispassion in Early Modern Medicine’, Vesalius, vol. 8, no. 2, 2002, pp. 45–52.

  Stack, Queen Victoria’s Skull, 2008, op. cit.

  History of human dissection:

  Alberti, Morbid Curiosities, 2011, op. cit.

  Helen MacDonald, Human Remains: Dissection and Its Histories, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.

  Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, 1988, op. cit.

  Ruth Richardson and B. Hurwitz, ‘Donors’ Attitudes Towards Body Donation for Dissection’, Lancet, vol. 346, no. 8970, 1995, pp. 277–279.

  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, London: Penguin Books, 1992 (1818).

  Preparing human skulls and medical specimens:

  Alberti, Morbid Curiosities, 2011, op. cit.

  Samuel J. M. M. Alberti, ‘Anatomical Craft: A History of Medical Museum Practice’, in Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijenberg (eds.), The Fate of Anatomical Collections, London: Ashgate, forthcoming.

  Robert E. Bieder, ‘The Collecting of Bones for Anthropological Narratives’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 1992, pp. 21–35.

  Dias, ‘French collections of skulls’, 2012, op. cit.

  Dickey, Cranioklepty, 2009, op. cit.

  Fabian, The Bone Collectors, 2010, op. cit.

  Hallam, ‘Articulating Bones’, 2010, op. cit.

  A.G. Harvey, ‘Chief Concomly’s Skull’, Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 2, 1939, pp. 161–167.

  Jorion, ‘Downfall of the Skull’, 1982, op. cit.

  Joseph Barnard Davis, William Crowther and William Lanney:

  Helen MacDonald, ‘The Bone Collectors’, New Literatures Review, vol. 42, 2004, pp. 45–56.

  MacDonald, Human Remains, 2005, op. cit.

  Helen MacDonald, ‘Reading the “Foreign Skull”: An Episode in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Human Dissection’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 36, no. 125, 2005, pp. 81–96.

  Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1981.

  Gunther von Hagens and Body Worlds:

  Uli Linke, ‘Touching the Corpse: The Unmaking of Memory in the Body Museum’, Anthropology Today, vol. 21, no. 5, 2005, pp. 13–19.

  Tony Walter, ‘Plastination for Display: A New Way to Dispose of the Dead’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 10, no. 3, 2004, pp. 603–627.

  The brain as an object of scientific research:

  Peter Edidin, ‘In search of answers from the great brains of Cornell’, New York Times, 24 May 2005.

  Cathy Gere, ‘The Brain in a Vat’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 35, 2004, pp. 219–225.

  Gould, Mismeasure of Man, 1981, op. cit.

  Jennifer Michael Hecht, The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism and Anthropology in France, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

  Marius Kwint, ‘Exhibiting the Brain’, in Marius Kwint and Richard Wingate (eds.), Brains: The Mind as Matter, London: Profile Books, 2012, pp. 8–21.

  Jean Paul G. Vonsattel et al., ‘Twenty-First-Century Brain Banking. Processing Brains for Research: The Columbia University Methods’, Acta Neuropathol, vol. 115, 2008, pp. 509–532.

  Richard Wingate, ‘Examining the Brain’, in Marius Kwint and Richard Wingate (eds.), Brains: The Mind as Matter, London: Profile Books, 2012, pp. 22–31.

  Chapter 8: Living Heads

  Galvanism:

  Roald Dahl, ‘William and Mary’ in Kiss, Kiss, London: Penguin Books, 1962.

  Stanley Finger and Mark B. Law, ‘Karl August Weinhold and His “Science” in the Era of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Experiments on Electricity and the Restoration of Life’, Journal of the History of Medicine, vol. 53, 1998, pp. 161–180.

  Iwan Rhys Morus, ‘Galvanic Cultures: Electricity and Life in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Endeavour, vol. 22, no. 1, 1998, pp. 7–11.

  André Parent, ‘Giovanni Aldini: From Animal Electricity to Human Brain Stimulation’, Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, vol. 31, 2004, pp. 576–584.

  Charlotte Sleigh, ‘Life, Death and Galvanism’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 219–248.

  Experiments on the severed heads of executed criminals:

  Gerould, Guillotine, 1992, op. cit.

  Kershaw, History of the Guillotine, 1993, op. cit.

  Jack Kervorkian, ‘A Brief History of Experimentation on Condemned and Executed Humans’, Journal of the National Medical Association, vol. 77. no. 3, 1985, pp. 215–226.

  Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, London: Penguin Books, 2003.

  Philip Smith, ‘Narrating the Guillotine: Punishment Technology as Myth and Symbol’, Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 20, no. 5, 2003, pp. 27–51.

  Debates about the guillotine and the persistence of life:

  Arasse, The Guillotine, 1989, op. cit.

  Albert Camus (trans. Justin O’Brien), Resistance, Rebellion and Death, New York: Modern Library, 1963.

  Gerould, Guillotine, 1992, op. cit.

  Kershaw, History of the Guillotine, 1993, op. cit.

  Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘Medical Mediations: Mind, Body and the Guillotine’, History Workshop Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 1989, pp. 39–52.

  Debates about decapitation and brain death:

  John P. Lizza, ‘Where’s Waldo? The “Decapitation Gambit” and the Definition of Death’, Journal of Medical Ethics, vol. 37, no. 12, pp. 743–746.


  Franklin G. Miller and Robert D. Truog, ‘Decapitation and the Definition of Death’, Journal of Medical Ethics, vol. 36, 2010, pp. 632–634.

  Charles Guthrie and Vladimir Demikhov:

  Igor E. Konstantinov, ‘At the Cutting Edge of the Impossible: A Tribute to Vladimir P. Demikhov, Texas Heart Institute Journal, vol. 36, no. 5, 2009, pp. 453–458.

  Roach, Stiff, 2003, op. cit.

  Hugh E. Stephenson and Robert S. Kimpton, America’s First Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology: The Story of Guthrie and Carrel, Boston, MA: Midwestern Vascular Surgery Society, 2001.

  Edmund Stevens, ‘Russia’s two-headed dog’, Life magazine, 20 July 1959, pp. 79–82.

  Robert White:

  David Bennun, ‘Dr. Robert White’, Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 2000, online at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.

  bennun/interviews/drwhite.html

  Roach, Stiff, 2003, op. cit.

  Cryonics:

  Steve Bridge, ‘The Neuropreservation Option: Head First into the Future’, Cryonics Magazine, 3rd quarter, 1995.

  Mike Darwin, ‘But What will the Neighbors think? A Discourse on the History and Rationale of Neurosuspension’, Cryonics Magazine, October 1988.

  Bronwyn Parry, ‘Technologies of Immortality: The Brain on Ice’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 35, 2004, pp. 391–413.