Lisa Rosner

On her book The Anatomy Murders (now in paperback)

Cover Interview of February 26, 2012

Comments

November 22, 2012

Very interesting book, I would like to know if you have any thoughts on what happened to the body of ‘Margaret Docherty’, I am unable to find any references to a death certificate for her, or in fact, where she may be interned. As you obviously have done a lot of research on Burke and Hare, could you may have come across any information regarding the whereabouts of her remains, I would be very grateful if you have any views on this.
Thank you very much.
Yours
Elizabeth Triantafillou
Edinburgh

history / science / europe / 19th century / medicine / criminal justice / homicide / edinburgh / hare william / burke william /

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011