Frankenstein: Texts and Contexts

On the use of colored wax to produce lifelike medical teaching models,

Choosing a cadaver (hanged or drowned?), with instructions on dissection, and on identifying the parts and functions of the human body.

On the remains of 15 individuals dissected by William Hewson, who had run an anatomy school on the premises. He was Franklin's friend and the son-in-law of Franklin’s landlady,

This organization worked to restore drowning victims to life. Mary Wollstonecraft was revived after attempting suicide by leaping off of the Putney Bridge in 1795.

A popular lay-person's health manual. See the Table of Contents beginning on p.xxvii.

A basic text by a leading anatomist of the time .

Two lectures presented to medical students by Sir William Lawrence at the beginning of their studies.

An Oxford University Ph.D. thesis by Florent Pallualt (2003).

How to distinguish an apparent death from a genuine one.

The testimony included in this Parliamentary report led to the adoption of the Anatomy Act of 1832.

"Professor Sharon Ruston surveys the scientific background to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, considering contemporary investigations into resuscitation, galvanism, and the possibility of states between life and death."

Immense, searchable database on the history of medicine, with texts and images.

A broadside that illustrates the uncertainty of death in the Regency period.