Lisa Rosner

On her book The Anatomy Murders (now in paperback)

Cover Interview of February 27, 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 / europe / science / 19th century / medicine / criminal justice / homicide / edinburgh / hare william / burke william /

Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.

Daryn Lehoux,
Interview of November 13, 2017

It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.

Christopher Rea,
Interview of October 26, 2016