Body snatcher. Grave robber. Mad scientist. Brilliant surgeon. Delve into the macabre world of St. Louis's Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell, a man so loathed by the public that he wore body armor and so idolized by his anatomy students that they dug up corpses for his experiments. This ghoulish doctor cast a pall over the city and left a host of fiendish mysteries. Did his mother's ghost actually help him escape an angry mob? Did he really hang the corpse of his daughter in Hannibal's Mark Twain Cave? What very real horrors remained in his medical college after loyal Unionists drove him out? Dissect a... Read More
Formats
Paperback
🚛 Ground shipping arrival between Friday, March 28 and Thursday, April 03.
Free returns. Free Economy shipping on orders $50+.
Body snatcher. Grave robber. Mad scientist. Brilliant surgeon. Delve into the macabre world of St. Louis's Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell, a man so loathed by the public that he wore body armor and so idolized by his anatomy students that they dug up corpses for his experiments. This ghoulish doctor cast a pall over the city and left a host of fiendish mysteries. Did his mother's ghost actually help him escape an angry mob? Did he really hang the corpse of his daughter in Hannibal's Mark Twain Cave? What very real horrors remained in his medical college after loyal Unionists drove him out? Dissect a... Read More
Body snatcher. Grave robber. Mad scientist. Brilliant surgeon. Delve into the macabre world of St. Louis's Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell, a man so loathed by the public that he wore body armor and so idolized by his anatomy students that they dug up corpses for his experiments. This ghoulish doctor cast a pall over the city and left a host of fiendish mysteries. Did his mother's ghost actually help him escape an angry mob? Did he really hang the corpse of his daughter in Hannibal's Mark Twain Cave? What very real horrors remained in his medical college after loyal Unionists drove him out? Dissect a life surrounded by speculation and a legend littered with ghosts.
Details
Pages: 144
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Imprint: The History Press
Publication Date: 12th October 2015
State: Missouri
Illustration Note: Black and White
ISBN: 9781467118880
Format: Paperback
BISACs: TRAVEL / Pictorials (see also PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional) PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional (see also TRAVEL / Pictorials) HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
Reviews
The life of the notorious St. Louis physician Joseph Nash McDowell (1805-1868) is recounted in this entertaining short narrative. Woven into the book are overviews of the practice of grave robbing, of medicine on the early American frontier, and of nineteenth-century embalming techniques, making for a lively look at one of Missouri's most infamous residents. Missouri Historical Review/
Author Bio
Victoria Cosner has spent the better part of thirty years poking around graveyards and digging for lost pieces of history. She is especially fond of delving into missing pieces of women's history. She co-authored a book, Women under the Third Reich (Greenwood Publishing), and next turned her attention to the infamous Madame Lalaurie and her incredible family. It wasn't long before another bizarre historical figure caught her attention: Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell. A longtime member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, she has worked in public history facilities for more than twenty years and has her master's degree in American studies, specializing in cultural landscapes of garden cemeteries.
Lorelei Shannon has spent the better part of thirty years following Victoria Cosner around graveyards for her own inscrutable purposes. Lorelei and Victoria met at the tender age of fourteen. From the very start, they shared a love of history--particularly the obscure and unusual. While Victoria went on to become a respected historian, Lorelei became a novelist. She never lost her love of history, and she frequently incorporates historical elements in her Southern Gothic fiction. She has now collaborated with Victoria on two nonfiction books, and she hopes there will be many more to come.
Body snatcher. Grave robber. Mad scientist. Brilliant surgeon. Delve into the macabre world of St. Louis's Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell, a man so loathed by the public that he wore body armor and so idolized by his anatomy students that they dug up corpses for his experiments. This ghoulish doctor cast a pall over the city and left a host of fiendish mysteries. Did his mother's ghost actually help him escape an angry mob? Did he really hang the corpse of his daughter in Hannibal's Mark Twain Cave? What very real horrors remained in his medical college after loyal Unionists drove him out? Dissect a life surrounded by speculation and a legend littered with ghosts.
Pages: 144
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Imprint: The History Press
Publication Date: 12th October 2015
State: Missouri
Illustrations Note: Black and White
ISBN: 9781467118880
Format: Paperback
BISACs: TRAVEL / Pictorials (see also PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional) PHOTOGRAPHY / Subjects & Themes / Regional (see also TRAVEL / Pictorials) HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
The life of the notorious St. Louis physician Joseph Nash McDowell (1805-1868) is recounted in this entertaining short narrative. Woven into the book are overviews of the practice of grave robbing, of medicine on the early American frontier, and of nineteenth-century embalming techniques, making for a lively look at one of Missouri's most infamous residents. Missouri Historical Review/
Victoria Cosner has spent the better part of thirty years poking around graveyards and digging for lost pieces of history. She is especially fond of delving into missing pieces of women's history. She co-authored a book, Women under the Third Reich (Greenwood Publishing), and next turned her attention to the infamous Madame Lalaurie and her incredible family. It wasn't long before another bizarre historical figure caught her attention: Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell. A longtime member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, she has worked in public history facilities for more than twenty years and has her master's degree in American studies, specializing in cultural landscapes of garden cemeteries.
Lorelei Shannon has spent the better part of thirty years following Victoria Cosner around graveyards for her own inscrutable purposes. Lorelei and Victoria met at the tender age of fourteen. From the very start, they shared a love of history--particularly the obscure and unusual. While Victoria went on to become a respected historian, Lorelei became a novelist. She never lost her love of history, and she frequently incorporates historical elements in her Southern Gothic fiction. She has now collaborated with Victoria on two nonfiction books, and she hopes there will be many more to come.
