Stiffs, Skulls & Skeletons

An intriguing and comprehensive exploration of the skeleton and the dead body, Stiffs, Skulls & Skeletons: Medical Photography and Symbolism includes more than 450 rare photographs. Stanley B. Burns, MD, has studied, collected and written on medical photography for over four decades focusing on unexplored areas, with his books placing him in the forefront of medical photographic history scholarship. With previously unpublished photographs, this sumptuously illustrated book is an extraordinary work of medical, historical and cultural research. It is a timeless visual essay that will surely become a standard resource* for collectors, curators, artists, and scholars. This work reveals the nineteenth-century fascination with the dead body and body parts. The classic visual iconography of postmortem, dissection, and bone photography is presented and expanded to include early autopsy images and X-ray studies. No prior visual work has presented the once very popular hobby of collecting skulls and also shown their use in racial and psychological profiling research.