Sydney meeting
Grave business: Dissection in Jane Austen’s England
Jackie Dent

In Jane Austen’s lifetime, the dead were currency. Surgeons needed bodies to train on and as the only ones available were hanged murderers, they turned to body snatchers. In this talk, Dr Jackie Dent looks at the world of dissection through the Georgian period, tracing how crucial reforms around this time paved the way for whole body donation, which now underpins Western medical sciences. Jackie is a journalist, social scientist and the author of The Great Dead Body Teachers, about her grandparents’ decision to donate their bodies to science and the hidden world of anatomy.