Abstract
In the middle of the lecture theatre stood a ‘small oval table painted green and set on small wooden wheels’.2 Around it, the above address was made by Thomas Turner, leading Manchester anatomist, to new medical students at the start of the winter dissection season in 1840–1841. It took place at the Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, located on Pine Street, in the city-centre. Turner told students that he was very proud of his latest purchase, for this was no ordinary dissection table. It was an object of awe and veneration, symbolising the advancement of the anatomical sciences. Turner explained that ‘on that very table John Hunter prepared some of those splendid specimens which now enrich the walls of the museum of the College of Surgeons’.3 Its acquisition confirmed that medical education was in the ascendancy in the North of England.
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Notes
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© 2012 Elizabeth T. Hurren
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Hurren, E.T. (2012). ‘Better a third of a loaf than no bread’: Manchester’s Human Material. In: Dying for Victorian Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230355651_7
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