Book Description

James Bower Harrison was a surgeon at the Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary. In his book, first published in 1852, Dr Bower Harrison explores the moments and meanings of death through a host of literary and medical examples; quotations from Byron, Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson sit alongside case studies from Harrison's friends and colleagues. The former surgeon acknowledged the morose subject of his book, but suggested to the reader: "I am not one of those who would wish to throw a gloom upon life, and carry the skull round at the feast- I would rather throw the light of reason, as far as it will shine, on the mysteries of the grave." The book clearly captures the Victorian fascination with death. It also reveals something of the attitudes of the patients treated by the Doctor. The obituary for Dr. Bower Harrison, published in The British Medical Journal in 1890, recorded his 'sudden' death at his home in Higher Broughton. As sudden as his death may have been, Dr. Bower Harrison had spent a lifetime preparing for it; writing in the introduction to The Medical Aspects of Death he suggested that there comes a time when 'we all wake up to the conviction that we are ourselves no exception to the rule... to the conviction that we shall die.' More from the Author: "In youth, it is not common to think much about death. A person would be considered to be of a very serious turn of mind who gave attention to such a subject in the earlier periods of his life. There comes a time, however, sooner or later, in which it is perceived that there is a reality in the meaning of the speeches we have so long unthinkingly made or heard others make. We wake up to the conviction that we are ourselves no exception to the rule; in fact, to the conviction that we shall die. Already we find ourselves in the middle period of life; already the scene is shifting, and we begin to perceive that it will shift still more. It wants no great exhortation, then, to see that everyone is individually interested in all that relates to death. A person must be wanting in reflection if he does not consider, at least when he has made some progress in life, that he will very soon find himself at his journey's end. It is natural then to have a curiosity about death; and it is partly with a view to satisfy this curiosity, and partly with a view to fill up the intervals left by more arduous professional studies, that I have written what follows." This is an extraordinary book.