Dickey Colin. Cranioklepty. Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius

Unbridled. 2009.
Language: English.Quality: originally electronic.What happened to the mortal remains of the great ones.
Colin Dickey's Cranioklepty attempts to shed light on the post-mortem fates of some of history's most well-known people. Dickey interweaves a series of (sometimes astonishingly) true tales on the theft of famous skulls. Beginning with opening of Haydn's grave, the author guides us through the skull thefts of such persons as Beethoven, Mozart, Swedenborg, Sir Thomas Browne, and Descartes. Dickey lays out the cast of characters behind the skull thefts and the individuals who coveted them so much, sometimes passing them on to children in their wills as if they were family heirlooms. These stories are coupled with a history of the beginning - and end - of cranioscopy and phrenology and how they affected the study of medicine.