Anatomists of Empire – Race, Evolution and the Discovery of Human Biology in the British World. Ross L.Jones (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2020). ISBN: 978‐1‐925984‐70‐5

Abstract

This book introduces the ‘dramatis personae’ of three important and well-travelled anatomists: a Scotsman (Arthur Keith), an Englishman (Frederic Wood Jones) and an Australian (Grafton Elliot Smith). Their remarkable biographies are skilfully interwoven within a not-inconsiderable wider history of anatomy and anthropology and what became the scientific quest to understand humanity and its place in the environment in the late 19th and early 20th century. This book introduces the ‘dramatis personae’ of three important and well-travelled anatomists: a Scotsman (Arthur Keith), an Englishman (Frederic Wood Jones) and an Australian (Grafton Elliot Smith). Their remarkable biographies are skilfully interwoven within a not-inconsiderable wider history of anatomy and anthropology and what became the scientific quest to understand humanity and its place in the environment in the late 19th and early 20th century. Wood's work carefully narrates the struggle among anatomists, anthropologists and zoologists for academic supremacy. As the idea of ‘Human Biology’ emerges, the differences in how anatomy was taught across the world, particularly in ‘Atlantic and Antipodean’ medical schools, make for fascinating reading. Another engaging thread is the description of the ways that anatomical knowledge was gathered and disseminated and what becomes particularly apparent is the growing influence of the individual anatomist. This importance is emphasised by their efforts to gain control of scientific societies to direct debate in a post-Darwinian world or the growing trend for them to give international lectures, appear on radio programmes and, in some cases, write their own newspaper columns. Jones also tells of a time that museums were becoming the centre of the global exchange networks that collected and swapped both animal and then human specimens. This process quickly became tangled into a story of European Imperialism and Colonialism with Australian human biological remains in particular being in great demand. Although anatomists like Grafton Elliot Smith used anatomical studies to challenge and discredit racist theories based on human anatomy, their urge for collecting and studying human remains from all parts of the British Empire (even when the coded language of their correspondence suggests they knew their collecting activities were not appropriate) was placed above their intellectual and political beliefs. As we live in a time when many museums across the UK are developing ‘decolonising’ narratives around their collections and interrogating the provenance of their historic specimens, this section of the book is particularly timely. Within this current climate, Jones may have dwelt longer on some of the legacies that these historic collecting activities have left us, but that is perhaps outwith his original remit. Overall, Jones argues convincingly that these three anatomists deserve much greater recognition and he tells a compelling tale of their world of academic rivalries and clashing interpretations of anatomy that will be of interest to both the historian of science and the general reader.