What do you think?
Rate this book
Digging Up the Dead: Uncovering the Life and Times of an Extraordinary Surgeon
A tearaway young man from Norfolk, Astley Cooper (1768-1841) became the world's richest and most famous surgeon. Admired from afar by the Brontës and up close by his student Keats, his success was born of an appetite for bloody revolutions.He set up an international network of bodysnatchers, won the Royal Society's highest prize and boasted to Parliament that there was no one whose body he could not steal. Experimenting on his neighbours' corpses and the living bodies of their stolen pets, his discoveries were as great as his infamy.Caught up in the French Revolution, and in attempts to bring radical democracy to Britain, Cooper nevertheless rose to become surgeon to royals from the Prince Regent to Queen Victoria. Setting the past against his own reactions to autopsies and operations, hospitals and poetry, Burch's Digging Up the Dead is a riveting account of a world of gothic horror as well as fertile idealism.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2007
7 people are currently reading
216 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 21, 2018
If you have a weak stomach then don't read this book!
Astley Cooper was a surgeon at a time when surgeons were starting to earn the respect of the elite physicians with their knowledge of anatomy and with their success in the operating theatre. But there was no anaesthetics, no understanding of infections, no antibiotics, and there were also a great many surgeons considerably less qualified than Cooper and considerably less concerned for the well-being of their patient. Surgery was a very bloody and dangerous business for all. Surgeons were perforce anatomists, plunging their hands one minute into the rotting cavity of their cadavers, the next into their patients, strapped down on the operating table. No wonder both patients and surgeon often died of sepsis.
This is a book full of gory detail. Cooper had his bodies stolen to order. He was, like many others including his hero John Hunter (of The Knife Man, a brilliant book) a vivisectionist. His humanity to the suffering of his patients was boundless. In later life he saved horses from the knackers yard and put them out to pasture. But in between, he had no compunction in stealing his neighbours pets and operating on them live. We find the idea utterly repugnant. He was a man of his time, a product of the Enlightenment and of Hunter's principles of observation. The pursuit of knowledge was everything to him.
As I said, if you have a weak stomach this book is not for you, but I found it utterly fascinating. Cooper's politics changed as he grew older, from a Radical to a rampant Tory who actually defended George IV - one of the few! He was incredibly ambitious and totally lacking in scruples when it came to obtaining bodies and their parts to dissect - he considered a day lost if he didn't dissect something before breakfast. He once commissioned one of his bodysnatchers to head off to the battlefields of Waterloo to collect teeth. But his dedication to surgery, to finding new cures, to finding ways to cure with the minimum of pain, is admirable.
One thing I wasn't so sure about was the author's occasional entrances into the text with his own anecdotes. I understood what he was trying to do, to draw the parallels between then and now, to show that the biography was hugely personal, but I found it distracting. But that is a minor point.
I'm not going to say this was a 'good' read because it was at times distressing, though always fascinating. If you like this kind of thing - and I love it - then it's highly recommended.
Astley Cooper was a surgeon at a time when surgeons were starting to earn the respect of the elite physicians with their knowledge of anatomy and with their success in the operating theatre. But there was no anaesthetics, no understanding of infections, no antibiotics, and there were also a great many surgeons considerably less qualified than Cooper and considerably less concerned for the well-being of their patient. Surgery was a very bloody and dangerous business for all. Surgeons were perforce anatomists, plunging their hands one minute into the rotting cavity of their cadavers, the next into their patients, strapped down on the operating table. No wonder both patients and surgeon often died of sepsis.
This is a book full of gory detail. Cooper had his bodies stolen to order. He was, like many others including his hero John Hunter (of The Knife Man, a brilliant book) a vivisectionist. His humanity to the suffering of his patients was boundless. In later life he saved horses from the knackers yard and put them out to pasture. But in between, he had no compunction in stealing his neighbours pets and operating on them live. We find the idea utterly repugnant. He was a man of his time, a product of the Enlightenment and of Hunter's principles of observation. The pursuit of knowledge was everything to him.
As I said, if you have a weak stomach this book is not for you, but I found it utterly fascinating. Cooper's politics changed as he grew older, from a Radical to a rampant Tory who actually defended George IV - one of the few! He was incredibly ambitious and totally lacking in scruples when it came to obtaining bodies and their parts to dissect - he considered a day lost if he didn't dissect something before breakfast. He once commissioned one of his bodysnatchers to head off to the battlefields of Waterloo to collect teeth. But his dedication to surgery, to finding new cures, to finding ways to cure with the minimum of pain, is admirable.
One thing I wasn't so sure about was the author's occasional entrances into the text with his own anecdotes. I understood what he was trying to do, to draw the parallels between then and now, to show that the biography was hugely personal, but I found it distracting. But that is a minor point.
I'm not going to say this was a 'good' read because it was at times distressing, though always fascinating. If you like this kind of thing - and I love it - then it's highly recommended.
May 4, 2009
It is always inspiring to read about people who are driven by the love of their work. Cooper was driven by his insatiable curiosity and this book chronicles how his work shaped his life. Burch weaves some of his own experiences in medical school throughout the book and it only adds to the richness of the work. I would highly recommend this book!
October 24, 2011
While biography is a frequently difficult subject, Dr. Burch seems to set the bar higher by choosing the up-hill task of writing a biography about a man whose personal records have been destroyed. From public records, Dr. Burch has reconstructed the timeline of his subject's life and then made his best guess as to why the events fit in this order.
To fill in the chasms, Dr. Burch pads the material with various stories about the events of the era. The result is a book that could as aptly be titled "Surgeon's lives, 1790-1820." Nominally, it is a biography of one surgeon in particular, but few of the events are drawn directly from that person's life. Dr. Burch further supplements the material with frequent references to his own life and training as a doctor. A passable book for those interested in the history of medicine; a seriously lacking book for those expecting a biography.
To fill in the chasms, Dr. Burch pads the material with various stories about the events of the era. The result is a book that could as aptly be titled "Surgeon's lives, 1790-1820." Nominally, it is a biography of one surgeon in particular, but few of the events are drawn directly from that person's life. Dr. Burch further supplements the material with frequent references to his own life and training as a doctor. A passable book for those interested in the history of medicine; a seriously lacking book for those expecting a biography.
November 24, 2008
awesome book! well written and extremely interesting.
April 23, 2019
I had read of Sir Astley Cooper in a book about "resurrection men" - the men who dug into new graves, broke the lids of coffins and stole the bodies of the dead. They provided corpses for the surgeons and medical students to dissect, and Astley Cooper was an avid dissector and surgeon.
[Stealing bodies wasn't legal theft because a dead body had no value in law; but stealing the shrouds of the dead was. So was killing people. That's why Burke and Hare - or one of the pair - got it in the neck.]
Sir Astley Cooper himself was as interesting as any surgeon, in my opinion. No more and no less. He may have known Jane Austen's brothers Edward and Henry. He certainly knew the Prince Regent and his brothers professionally. He performed the autopsies of both George IV and William IV. He was the celebrity surgeon of the 1780s to 1820s, and his painstaking dissections made him so, because he knew just where to cut in and find the tumors and bladder stones, not to mention repairing hernias and carrying out mastectomies. (Remind me to find out who cut into Jane Austen's cousin Eliza. I read about her too - and the horrible breast cancer she suffered and died from.)
I found the real meat of the book was what the education and training of a physician, a surgeon and an apothecary was like in days of the Prince Regent to the early adulthood of Charles Dickens. While Jane Austen wrote about people who were outwardly polite and proper, there were people outside her brother Henry's door in London who were not so clean and tidy in their livelihoods.
I warn you that this book should not be read before, during and after meals if you suffer from stomach ailments. There are not a lot of drawings of morbid anatomy, but there are a few, and surgical operations were not at all done aseptically.
[Stealing bodies wasn't legal theft because a dead body had no value in law; but stealing the shrouds of the dead was. So was killing people. That's why Burke and Hare - or one of the pair - got it in the neck.]
Sir Astley Cooper himself was as interesting as any surgeon, in my opinion. No more and no less. He may have known Jane Austen's brothers Edward and Henry. He certainly knew the Prince Regent and his brothers professionally. He performed the autopsies of both George IV and William IV. He was the celebrity surgeon of the 1780s to 1820s, and his painstaking dissections made him so, because he knew just where to cut in and find the tumors and bladder stones, not to mention repairing hernias and carrying out mastectomies. (Remind me to find out who cut into Jane Austen's cousin Eliza. I read about her too - and the horrible breast cancer she suffered and died from.)
I found the real meat of the book was what the education and training of a physician, a surgeon and an apothecary was like in days of the Prince Regent to the early adulthood of Charles Dickens. While Jane Austen wrote about people who were outwardly polite and proper, there were people outside her brother Henry's door in London who were not so clean and tidy in their livelihoods.
I warn you that this book should not be read before, during and after meals if you suffer from stomach ailments. There are not a lot of drawings of morbid anatomy, but there are a few, and surgical operations were not at all done aseptically.
October 19, 2017
Loved this book! A fascinating and well written read which really brings the character of Astley Cooper to life.
August 14, 2019
Read this after reading the author's book about the future, then Taking The Medicine. Nineteenth century surgery isn't my cup of Tetley, but I guess I found the gore and the bodysnatching enough to keep me gripped! Not sure it's one I'll re-read in a hurry though, but enjoyed reading it.
February 20, 2012
A precise, economical, life-affirming bio of the surgeon and dissector par excellence Astley Cooper, and a vivid tour of the influence of the scientific method on the field of medicine in enlightenment Britain. The examples of 18th century surgery are fascinating for a comparison with today's macro-knowledge and the cultural impact of the invention of anaesthetics, and the idea that a particular psychology - more than exposure, a peculiar pioneering faith - would be necessary for the surgeons of the time to inflict agonising procedures for the good of a patient. Examples of the vivisection experiments of Cooper and his contemporaries appear throughout the book, and this is not easy to read or at worst - dwell upon, but the author does attempt to provide consolation through a context of benefit and the example of modern practice of which he observed as a student physician. His insights as a professional (attending humans, sometimes corpses) in the 20th century are challenging, and too few...
"Nothing is quite so strange as that which is half familiar. We know that bodies fail and die, that after death they change and decompose. We realise that much of what was familiar to us in a living person will still be present in the corpse. The overlap, the uncertain boundary, is what disturbs. As a medical student I had expected that going into a room full of half-dissected corpses would be nightmarish. It was, but that feeling quickly wore off. Soon I could reach into a large fluid-filled plastic bucket and pull out a flayed and bobbing shoulder without remembering how unsettling it had seemed a week before. But in other ways the experience was more intrusive, more insistent. It lingered. Memories came back during normal life, insinuating their way into the time I spent with the living. I may have left the dissecting room far behind, have scrubbed and showered and changed, but the recollections haunted me. They came back as I watched the living muscles moving in the bodies of friends and family."
"Nothing is quite so strange as that which is half familiar. We know that bodies fail and die, that after death they change and decompose. We realise that much of what was familiar to us in a living person will still be present in the corpse. The overlap, the uncertain boundary, is what disturbs. As a medical student I had expected that going into a room full of half-dissected corpses would be nightmarish. It was, but that feeling quickly wore off. Soon I could reach into a large fluid-filled plastic bucket and pull out a flayed and bobbing shoulder without remembering how unsettling it had seemed a week before. But in other ways the experience was more intrusive, more insistent. It lingered. Memories came back during normal life, insinuating their way into the time I spent with the living. I may have left the dissecting room far behind, have scrubbed and showered and changed, but the recollections haunted me. They came back as I watched the living muscles moving in the bodies of friends and family."
March 16, 2013
A stunning book that captures the bloody, gruesome and fascinating world of the beginnings of surgeons and the discovers made in the field of operations and medicine.
Astley Cooper is a vivid character of a man, and Druin Burch brings him to life again with skill and insights interest to the man who was once one of the world's greatest surgeons. An inspirational man of his time, and still manages to have an effect today.
Sometimes unnerving in it's descriptions of 18th century methods but yet mind-blowing at the levels of knowledge, understanding and inquisitiveness into the anatomy of living creatures, this book is an un-put-down-able read. Perfect for anyone who has any interest in the way the body works, or the slightest interest in science, specifically biology.
I randomly picked up this book at the 'Doctors, Dissection and Ressurection Men' exhibition at the Museum of London and I am glad I did!
Astley Cooper is a vivid character of a man, and Druin Burch brings him to life again with skill and insights interest to the man who was once one of the world's greatest surgeons. An inspirational man of his time, and still manages to have an effect today.
Sometimes unnerving in it's descriptions of 18th century methods but yet mind-blowing at the levels of knowledge, understanding and inquisitiveness into the anatomy of living creatures, this book is an un-put-down-able read. Perfect for anyone who has any interest in the way the body works, or the slightest interest in science, specifically biology.
I randomly picked up this book at the 'Doctors, Dissection and Ressurection Men' exhibition at the Museum of London and I am glad I did!
April 1, 2015
This is a biography of Astley Cooper, a British surgeon and anatomist who lived from 1768-1841 and also a biography of medicine at hat time period. It is not easy reading, but it is interesting and fascinating. The author, a British physician, is nearly a character in the book. For example, after discussing Cooper’s reactions to seeing his first surgery or his initial class in anatomy, the author will step in and talk about his own reactions and compare how things have changed and also remained the same. This is a very effective device and made the conditions of medicine in the early 19th century much more accessible. One of the best medical histories I have read.
January 15, 2012
I love biography and science, but avoid horror at all costs. Despite this book occasionally drifting into the latter - descriptions of operations without anaesthetic, bodysnatching, and the uses to which corpses were once put - the grip of the story carried me along. A vivid life, vividly told, it tells of Astley Cooper, an eighteenth century surgeon & political and scientific revolutionary, and the world he lived in. An exciting and brutal age, and he was a man who made the most of it.
July 25, 2011
good, flits about abit, and not actually that much about the ressurectionists, but a good read, esp if one is interested in the history of surgery.
December 13, 2015
I did not quite finish this , through some parts were interesting it just didn't draw me in , also the chapters including the awful experiments on animals was too much for me , not a fan
Want to read
November 1, 2009One of the nominees for my boyfriend's mother's book club in 2008-09.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews