A.W. Bates, The Anatomy of Robert Knox: Murder, Mad Science and Medical Regulation in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2010), pp. x + 228, £39.95, hardback, ISBN: 978-1-84519-381-2.

Abstract

As in all other re-runs of Knox’s troubled life, this book relies, in large part, upon Henry Lonsdale’s 1870 biography. It is a pity, therefore, that one has to go to the secondary source bibliography to get its full title. However, in a way, Lonsdale has had the last laugh, albeit posthumously. Bates refers to a judgement by John Struther that A Sketch of the Life and Writings of Robert Knox, The Anatomist was ‘reliable as to facts’ (p. 9), thereby capturing the most likely critical judgement of this book by historians of medicine. Struther, another anatomist, like Knox and Lonsdale, made his comment on a postcard now in the archives of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Although this and other manuscript material are footnoted in abbreviated form, the primary source bibliography is restricted to printed works only. This leads to difficulties for any reader wishing to follow up manuscript references. For example, census information about Knox’s household is referenced as ‘GROS 1841...’ (p. 193) but this acronym (General Register Office for Scotland) does not appear in the list of abbreviation for archives in the bibliography. Other references are inconsistent (GU and GUL for Glasgow University Library). Small matters one might contend; however, they are symptomatic of a fairly widespread disregard for post-1970 historiography of the history of medicine. Reading Bates on Knox, we do not know how scholars have characterised: medical culture in nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Paris and London; the market driven exigencies of city-based medical careers; the position of anatomy in the medical curriculum; the role of Royal Colleges in professionalising medicine; the relationship between medicine and science, etc. We know something about the background to transcendental anatomy and the arrangements for bodies following the Anatomy Act, but probably not enough. These are important omissions for a book that professes to deal primarily with Knox’s professional life and to ‘set his work as a scientist and teacher in context’ (p. 10). Without such historiographic engagement, all we are really left with are judgements about anatomists by anatomists, past and present. This phenomenon may well interest future historians of modern medicine but the absence of a historiographic perspective, combined with the well-known insufficiency of primary sources to shed new light upon Knox’s life, career and writings, make it unlikely that this book will ever replace Lonsdale’s. The last chapter ‘Science Run Mad’, discusses fictional representations of Knox in novels and on film from the 1830s to the early 1960s. This contains interesting material, but the author’s treatment falls well short of the book’s promising sub-title. We are told that representations of ‘Knox the villain’ continue to characterise public perceptions of anatomy (p. 161) and that there is still a ‘chasm’ today between professional and lay people in this respect (p. 173). The so-called chasm is actually far greater than the author imagines. As presented by him, it is an unbridgeable one between fact and myth, science and society, nature and culture. However, it is also entirely of his own making; and nowhere more so when Bates states that he has ‘particularly avoided any speculation on whether Knox knew or believed the bodies he purchased were those of murder victims’ (p. 10).