In January 1613, workers at an estate in the Dauphiné, in southeastern France, unearthed a number of large bones. They included two mandibles with some teeth, a couple of vertebrae, what seemed to be a sternum, a shoulder blade, the heel and instep of a foot, the top of a humerus, and (the prize) a …
Various large bones, discovered across Europe from around 1500 onward, raised the possibility among Renaissance naturalists and intellectuals that very large humans – some five or even ten meters tall – once existed in the past. The idea of giant ancestors already was prominent among scholars: the hugely popular works of Annius of Viterbo, particularly …
Last month I spent some time in Special Collections at the University of Glasgow Library, looking at the catalogues of the anatomical preparations of London anatomist and man-midwife William Hunter (1718-1783). Hunter, a Scot, left his collections to the University of Glasgow, where they still reside. Among the anatomical preparations listed in 1784 was “A …
Anita Guerrini 