Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Burke and Hare

  • Why did Darwin drop out of medical school?

    Richard Brown and Thalia Garvock-de MontbrunHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Erasmus Alvey (Ras) Darwin, the elder brother of Charles Darwin, completed six months of hospital training in Edinburgh in 1825-26 and then went to London to study at the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy.1,7 Charles Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1825-1827 and then…

  • The anatomy of beauty in nineteenth-century England

    Alan W. BatesLondon, United Kingdom Few characteristics seem more subjective and less amenable to scientific study than beauty. As the philosopher David Hume wrote in 1741, “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.” How then did some nineteenth-century European anatomists come to see human beauty as a branch of science for which…