Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus referenced the single-minded, self-obsessed drive of the Natural Scientist intent on experimention and discovery no matter what the effects on others. In Frankenstein, anatomists, bodysnatchers and the Monster (academia.edu), I show that the novel is also an examination of physicians-specifically anatomists. During the period that Shelley, probably with the help of Percy, her husband, wrote the novel, bodysnatching was of epidemic proportions, orchestrated by ambitious physicians.

In pursuit of knowledge, aggrandisement, status, wealth many physicians ignored the feelings of relatives and religious groups, purchasing corpses without restraint. By the time of Shelley’s novel corpses had become a commodity, exchangeable between countries in Europe, such as France, and Britain. Physicians became gang leaders in the trade, running many bodysnatchers in large groups.

Mothers, babies, were pulled out of the ground and dissected in sight of their remaining kin.

The bodies tended to be from the poorer sections of society, and few from the wealthier classes were thus used. If you were a criminal or on hard times, the likelihood is that your body would end up on a slab, cut into for the benefit of gathered medical students, the dissected remains displayed later in pickle in a museum set up for teaching purposes.

Reads-Frankenstein, anatomists, bodysnatchers and the Monster.