Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS ix
3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
4. Introduction 1
5. 1. "The Mysteries of the Dead Body": Death, Embodiment, and Social Identity 13
6. 2. "A Genuine Zeal": The Anatomical Era in American Medicine 44
7. 3. "Anatomy Is the Charm": Dissection and Medical Identity in Nineteenth-Century America 74
8. 4. "A Traffic of Dead Bodies": The Contested Bioethics of Anatomy in Antebellum America 98
9. 5. "Indebted to the Dissecting Knife": Alternative Medicine and Anatomical Consensus in Antebellum America 136
10. 6. "The House I Live In": Popular Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Antebellum America 168
11. 7. "The Foul Altar of a Dissecting Table": Anatomy, Sex, and Sensationalist Fiction at Mid-Century 212
12. 8. The Education of Sammy Tubbs: Anatomical Dissection, Minstrelsy, and the Technology of Self-Making in Postbellum America 238
13. 9. "Anatomy Out of Gear": Popular Anatomy at the Margins in Late Nineteenth-Century America 274
14. Conclusion 313
15. NOTES 329
16. BIBLIOGRAPHY 385
17. INDEX 423