ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how nineteenth-century medical students handled anatomical preparations. In the nineteenth century, both the contents and the methods of medical teaching changed profoundly. It is often thought the new practical teaching had no use for anatomical collections, but this chapter argues that the collections remained relevant. Their flexibility made it easy to adapt them to new medical theories. Furthermore, they suited the new teaching practices because students handled preparations actively: they took them out of their jars to feel, smell, re-examine, and even redissect them. With examples from Leiden and beyond, the chapter shows that anatomical preparations, used in this hands-on manner, played important roles in all medical teaching spaces, not only the museum, but also the lecture room, the dissection hall, the academic hospital, and the laboratory.
