Skulls

The collection of 1,540 skulls amassed by Barnard Davis during the Enlightenment represent just how far astray medical science has traveled in the past. Davis' skulls, largely collected by paying grave robbers, show a lack of medical ethics and a misguided attempt to prove the racist ideology popular in Europe at the time.

Dissecting Room

Bryson takes a tour of a dissecting room or a cadaver lab at Ollivere at the University of Nottingham Medical School in Chapter 9 to give readers a first hand view of the body's skeleton. Bryson feels like he might be sick while the doctor he is with shows him the aorta and then the organs of the abdomen: the liver, pancreas, kidneys and spleen. The scene allows Bryson to describe many of the body's parts in humorous detail and shows the difference between how dissection is treated today and history, when bodies were...