Mystery of Anatomy: Robert Knox

Abstract

This study will discuss Robert Knox's professional life, the difficulties that he had in obtaining cadavers, the relationship between anatomy and art, and the impact of the Industrial Revolution on medical developments. Robert Knox worked as a physician and anatomy teacher at the University of Edinburgh, School of Medicine. Despite difficulties in supplying cadavers, he managed to work on dissections and exhibit the corpses that he had dissected in order to immortalise them. Undoubtedly, another important aspect of this study is the Anatomy Act of 1832, which removed the legal obstacles to anatomical study and dissection Robert Knox had difficulty to obtain cadavers, and therefore, resorted to what we would now consider illegal ways. One's life is best understood when the period in which one lived is taken into account. The methods used to obtain cadavers at that time are illegal and unethical today; however, this