Daniel Vuillermin

In 1543, Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius, in De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), wrote: ‘the violation of the body would be the revelation of its truth.’ Three hundred years later, English, Scottish and Australian anatomists, anatomy inspectors, museum curators and seemingly anyone involved in the business of bodies adopted the credo of violation to the extent of a ... (read more)

The opening chapter of Robert Hughes’s memoir, Things I Didn’t Know (2006), may have persuaded readers that Australians are a mercenary, uncouth and ungrateful lot who love nothing more than a glistening athlete on a podium. Hughes had reason to be sensitive at this time, having eluded the ‘feather-foot’ on that desolate Western Australian highway in May 1999 and endured the trials that fo ... (read more)