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 also violating the truth. The revelation of their contravention of laws and desecration of the dead is the subject of Helen MacDonald’s second book on the cadaver trade.

Possessing the Dead: The Artful Science of Anatomy is a worthy companion to MacDonald’s first book, the award-winning Human Remains: Episodes in Human Dissection (2005), which explored dissection as a ‘cultural activity’ through the study of those who became ‘things for surgeons’. In Possessing the Dead, however, the focus is on the regulation of the cadaver trade; in particular, the transgressions of the British Anatomy Act 1832. Regulation is perhaps too strong a word, as the Act didn’t have loopholes but rather chasms. It was devised largely in response to the prevalence of body snatching and the infamous anatomy murders executed by William Burke and William Hare, where seventeen victims were sold (for between £10 and £15 per corpse) for the purpose of dissection.