The Anatomy of Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science during the Third Reich

Description

Of the many medical specializations to transform themselves during the rise of National Socialism, anatomy has received relatively little attention from historians. While politics and racial laws drove many anatomists from the profession, most who remained joined the Nazi party, and some helped to develop the scientific basis for its racialist dogma. As historian and anatomist Sabine Hildebrandt reveals, however, their complicity with the Nazi state went beyond the merely ideological. They progressed through gradual stages of ethical transgression, turning increasingly to victims of the regime for body procurement, as the traditional model of working with bodies of the deceased gave way, in some cases, to a new paradigm of experimentation with the “future dead.”
 Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Abbreviations and German Terms Introduction Chapter 1 — History of Research on Medicine and Anatomy in National Socialism Chapter 2 — Anatomy and Related Sciences before 1933 Chapter 3 — The Interaction between the NS State and Anatomists Chapter 4 — The NS State and the Anatomische Gesellschaft Chapter 5 — Anatomists Who Became Victims of NS Policies Chapter 6 — Anatomists Working in NS Germany Chapter 7 — NS Victims and the Use of Their Bodies for Anatomical Purposes Chapter 8 — The Science of Anatomy in National Socialist Germany Chapter 9 — After the War Chapter 10 — Developments in Professional Ethics in Anatomy Chapter 11 — Anatomy—On the Edge of Culture Appendix Index