What is it about?
In the 19th century, anatomists collected skulls and pelves in order to investigate racial differences by the means of comparison. Many of these human remains derived from colonial contexts and were collected through global scientific networks, while others were obtained closer to home. The Swedish obstetrician Magnus Retzius collected female pelvis specimens categorized according to race and nation, while his brother Anders Retzius collected skulls. Magnus' collection manifested ideas about sex and race, emerged within the context of Swedish nation-building in the first half of the 19th century and was used to construct the notion of a "Swedish people". This study sheds light on how the collection was entangled with ideas about sex, race, pathology, and nationalism.
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Why is it important?
Today, there are human remains at universitites and hospitals in the form of specimens. In order to make informed choices on how to manage this, today controversial, historical heritage, we need knowledge about their past. This study contributes to the growing scholarsip on historical medical collections of human remains.
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Pelves of Various Nations’: Race and Sex in a Mid-nineteenth-Century Obstetric Collection, September 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004703759_007.
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