The Afterlives of Specimens - Science, Mourning and Whitman's Civil War

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. From the publisher –

The Afterlives of Specimens explores the space between science and sentiment, the historical moment when the human cadaver became both lost love object and subject of anatomical violence. Walt Whitman witnessed rapid changes in relations between the living and the dead. In the space of a few decades, dissection evolved from a posthumous punishment inflicted on criminals to an element of preservationist technology worthy of the presidential corpse of Abraham Lincoln. Whitman transitioned from a fervent opponent of medical bodysnatching to a literary celebrity who left behind instructions for his own autopsy, including the removal of his brain for scientific study. Grounded in archival discoveries, Afterlives traces the origins of nineteenth-century America’s preservation compulsion, illuminating the influences of botanical, medical, spiritualist, and sentimental discourses on Whitman’s work. Tuggle unveils previously unrecognized connections between Whitman and the leading “medical men” of his era, such as the surgeon John H. Brinton, founding curator of the Army Medical Museum, and Silas Weir Mitchell, the neurologist who discovered phantom limb syndrome. Remains from several amputee soldiers whom Whitman nursed in the Washington hospitals became specimens in the Army Medical Museum. Tuggle is the first scholar to analyze Whitman’s role in medically memorializing the human cadaver and its abandoned parts.

I do not know a lot about Walt Whitman beyond the movie “The Dead Poet’s Society” (and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal) but found this book fascinating. It combines, American history, civil war history and the history of medicine into one subject – dead bodies and what their specimens can do. I found it shocking to think of a doctor tanning the skin of his patients and using them to bind his books but things have changed in the last 150+ years. Modern medical advances could not have been made without the use of gross anatomy classes in medical schools – the specimens being, like my grandfather, donated to medical science. This book was well written and a very interesting take on history --- great for any book club or history buff.