ABSTRACT
In the early stages of English corpse medicine it was surgeons, rather than physicians, who played the most active role. And for much of Elizabeth's reign, it was surgeons who were left to undertake the still lowly and demeaning task of dissection for medical training. People can well imagine, that the surgeons would also probably be left to dispose of the bodies used as anatomy specimens once lectures were over. If the dry sunlight and dry bodies of modern Arabia and of Ancient Egypt might somehow cleanse corpse medicine of its more abhorrent connotations, the same can hardly be said for that which was harvested from the bloody and brutal killing sites of Britain and the neighbouring continent. As in the chapter, blood was only one-albeit very public-agent which the executioner could sell for medicine. It tames the unknown by localising and explaining inexplicable and unpredictable sickness and death-thus partially matching the vampires of continental Europe.
