Secret Scotlands: Scott and Stevenson Dissect the Doctors

Appleton Tower, Lecture Theatre 5, University of Edinburgh
Crichton Street, Edinburgh
6pm

The Burke and Hare body-snatching scandal of 1828 needed to be told - Edinburgh wanted to know, understand, and set aside its horrors. But Burke's death and his subsequent dissection didn't explain anything, and Doctor Knox wouldn't give his version of events. Walter Scott. the great national storyteller, refused to heal society's wounds by stitching them up in story. Robert Louis Stevenson, however, had no qualms about telling the tale. Stevenson was thoroughly familiar with modern medicine, having been subject to most of it. In 'The Body Snatcher' and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Stevenson dissects the doctors and shows the relationship between nineteenth-century medical practices and Gothic stories. Caroline McCracken-Flesher looks at the dark side of Edinburgh's scientific history and promises a gruesome talk accompanied by some suitably gory illustrations.

Caroline McCracken-Flesher was educated at Edinburgh, Oxford and Brown Universities and is an international authority on Scottish Literature. She has published widely on nineteenth-century writers such as James Hogg, Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson and has an interest in contemporary developments in civic Scotland. Her recent work includes Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow. She is Professor of English at the University of Wyoming.

For further information please email Penny Fielding.