ABSTRACT

This chapter explains how nineteenth-century medical researchers handled anatomical preparations. It shows that researchers could use the same preparations for decades, even centuries, on end, even as medical theories and practices changed. To understand how such prolonged use was (and still is) possible, I investigate the nineteenth-century afterlife of the collection of Professor Sebald Justinus Brugmans (1763–1819). I use the philosopher of biology Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s work to explain how their material characteristics make anatomical preparations remarkably flexible, and I then analyse how nineteenth-century researchers (re)used Brugmans’s preparations in three fields of study: physical anthropology, pathological anatomy, and comparative anatomy.