Cultural forces under the Ptolemaic dynasty briefly allowed scholars like Herophilus to practice dissection—and possibly vivisection—on human subjects.

Burke and Hare infamously killed people to meet the demand for bodies in Edinburgh’s anatomy schools in 1828. But who remembers the man for whom they worked?

This French scientist conducted a series of gruesome experiments in his quest to discover the true limits of life and death.

For cultural and geographical reasons, the city was a great place to find bodies to dissect. But there was also the matter of one well-connected doctor.

Our names for our fingers show a surprising depth of cultural variation—and similarity.

For centuries, the voice of the Greek doctor Galen, who held that blood is produced in the liver and filtered through tiny pores in the heart, went unchallenged.