From the eighteenth century to the present, public exhibitions of human anatomy have proved popular with a wide range of audiences, being marketed as both educational and entertaining. In Anatomy as Spectacle, Elizabeth Stephens takes us on a tour of freak shows, anatomical Venuses, museums doubling as dubious sex clinics, and the recent Body Worlds display, tracing the fascinating history of these exhibitions that gained popularity alongside the professionalization of medicine and rise of the popular spectacle.
Far from marginal, public exhibitions of the body have much to tell us about the history of popular culture and medicine, and Anatomy as Spectacle situates these displays as productive cultural spaces for the emergence of new ideas about bodily health.
