Zoom

Doctors' Riot of 1788: Body Snatching, Bloodletting, and Anatomy in America

Name: Doctors' Riot of 1788: Body Snatching, Bloodletting, and Anatomy in America
Brand: Prometheus Books
SKU: 9781493088058
Price: 22.99 USD
Availability: InStock

$22.99 $29.95

Discount: $6.96 (24%)

Hurry Up! Only 595 Left in Stock!

Out of stock >

Guarantee safe & Secure checkout

Availability: In Stock

Contributors:

Andy McPhee

Publisher:

Prometheus Books

Binding:

Hardcover

Book Category:

True Crime, Medical, History

Book Subcategory:

Historical, History, Modern

Book Topic:

18th Century

Shipping & Return +

The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

Rating and Reviews +

Specifications +

Release Date:

1/6/2026

ISBN 13:

9781493088058

Weight:

1 lbs

Size:

9.14 x 6.07 x 0.95 inches

Pages:

248

Mint Condition +

product description

Description

Throughout the seventeenth century, medical lecturers demonstrated human anatomy by dissecting a cadaver while surrounded by students. After the Revolutionary War, though, instructors realized that they needed many more cadavers to serve a growing number of medical students. Enter the "resurrectionists" - body snatchers. Resurrectionists were a cruel lot; men (almost always men and often medical students themselves) who would sneak into a cemetery under the cover of darkness, remove a body, and then sell it to a physician or anatomist - usually for around $100.

In April 1788, word of one particular body snatching quickly spread, and over the course of days, thousands of New Yorkers descended upon a New York City anatomy lab in a growing and dangerous riot. This book reveals the forgotten history of the so-called Doctors' Riot of 1788, along the way explaining the history of body snatching in the United States and England and exploring the moral questions behind an existential medical crisis: Does the need for medical students to learn anatomy on cadavers override society's demand for maintaining the dignity of its dead?

As the Doctors' Riot boiled over, Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and Revolutionary War hero Baron von Steuben were called in to quell the rioters, to no avail. Eventually, the state militia was ordered to fire into the crowd, killing several and injuring far more.

In this riveting and revelatory history, Andy McPhee delves into the post-revolutionary period of America to trace the foundational changes spurred by the riot, the influence of the riot on framers of the Constitution, the formation of Black-only churches and graveyards, how the discovery of formaldehyde heralded a new era in embalming practices, what body snatching looks like today, and how the teaching of anatomy continues to change and adapt to new technologies.

About the Author
Andy McPhee has worked in the publishing field for more than 30 years, starting as a writer and editor at Weekly Reader's mid-level science magazine and finishing as a healthcare textbook publisher for F. A. Davis, a major publishing house in Philadelphia. His narrative nonfiction book, Donora Death Fog: Clean Air and the Tragedy of a Pennsylvania Mill Town, published in 2023 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. McPhee is a Consultant and Fellow of the National Writing Project, and has earned two Feature Writing awards from the Association of Educational Publishers, now a division of the American Association of Publishers. McPhee is also a former registered nurse in critical and acute care--he practiced nursing for twenty-five years and taught nursing for ten. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.