Robert Knox - Knowledge

608:(1850), a "Zoological history" of mankind, Knox exaggerated supposed racial differences in support of his project, asserting that, anatomically and behaviourally, "race, or hereditary descent, is everything". He offered crude characterisations of each racial group: for example the Saxon (in which race he included himself) "invents nothing", "has no musical ear", lacks "genius", and is so "low and boorish" that "he does not know what you mean by fine art". No race was without its redeeming features, however; Knox described Saxons as "houghtful, plodding, industrious beyond all other races, a lover of labour for labour's sake". Such supposed racial characteristics meant that each race was naturally fitted for a particular environment and could not endure outside of it. While Knox maintained that all races were capable of some form of civilized life, he maintained that a vast gulf stood between the limited attainments available to the 'negroid' and to most 'mongoloid' races on one hand and the much greater past achievements and future potential of white men on the other. The Black, Knox remarked, 'is no more a white man than an ass is a horse or a zebra'. Ultimately however, all races were "estined ... to run, like all other animals, a certain limited course of existence", it mattering "little how their extinction is brought about". In 1862 Knox took the opportunity of a second edition of 535:

over the supply of bodies, and his competitive edge was lost. In 1837 Knox applied for the chair in pathology at Edinburgh University but his candidature was blocked by eleven existing professors, who preferred to abolish the post rather than appoint him. In 1842 he was unable to make payments to the Edinburgh funeratory system, from which bodies were supplied to private schools, and he relocated to Glasgow where, still short of subjects for dissection, he closed his school in 1844. In 1847 the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh found him guilty of falsifying a student's certificate of attendance (a not uncommon practice in private schools) and refused to accept any further certificates from him, effectively banning him from teaching in Scotland. In the same year he was expelled from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and had his election retrospectively cancelled.

323:, a magistrate and future Lieutenant Governor. Relations with Stockenström were marred when Knox accused O. G. Stockenström, Andries' brother, of theft, a charge apparently prompted by ill feeling between British and Boer officers. A court martial acquitted O. G. of the charge and Andries called Knox's conduct shameful. One of Stockenström's supporters, a former naval officer named Burdett, challenged Knox to a duel. Knox initially refused to fight, and Burdett "soundly horse whipped him on the parade before every Officer of the Garrison." Knox then grabbed a sabre and inflicted a slight wound to Burdett's arm. Knox's promotion to Assistant Surgeon was cancelled and he returned to Britain in disgrace, arriving on Christmas Day 1820. He remained only until the following October, after which he went to 810:

generation the more complex animals of after ages . . . the fish of the early world may have produced reptiles, then again birds and quadrupeds; lastly, man himself?" Newly formed species survived or perished according to external conditions, which acted as "potent checks to an infinite variety of forms". For one contemporary reviewer, his claim that "Species is the product of external circumstances, acting through millions of years" was "bold, disgusting, and gratuitous atheism." In modern terms, he proposed a theory of saltatory evolution, in which "deformations" in embryonic development produced "hopeful monsters" that, if fortuitously suited to the prevailing environmental conditions, gave rise to new species in a single,

511: 838: 483: 360: 544: 2271:"We may view the human race as derived originally from one stock, to which the arbitrary name of Caucasian has been given. This species, infleunced by climate and civilization, assumed, at a very early period, five distinct forms, which has also been arbitrarily designated by the names of Caucasian, Mongolic, Ethiopian, American, and Malay." (Note: Robert Knox was skeptical whether 'Malay' could be considered its own race and he considered them to be related to the "American variety" instead.) 677: 631:). Due to what he observed to be a prevalence of the "peculiar Mongol face" in many Highland Scots, Knox once suggested that he considered Highland Scots to descend from an early migration of "Mongol races". He considered the "Caledonian Celt" as touching "the end of his career: they are reduced to about one hundred and fifty thousand" and that the "Welsh Celts are not troublesome, but might easily become so." For Knox, "the 51: 429:. Shown round the dissecting theatre by Knox, "dressed in an overgown and with bloody fingers", Audubon reported that "The sights were extremely disagreeable, many of them shocking beyond all I ever thought could be. I was glad to leave this charnel house and breathe again the salubrious atmosphere of the streets". Knox's school flourished and he took on three assistants, Alexander Miller, 571:, London. He joined the medical register at its inception in 1858 and practiced obstetrics in Hackney. On 27 November 1860 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Ethnological Society of London, where he spoke in public for the last time on 1 July 1862. He continued working at the Cancer Hospital until shortly before his death on 20 December 1862, at 9 Lambe Terrace in 315:. There were few army surgeons in the Cape Colony but Knox found the people healthy and his duties were light. He enjoyed riding, shooting and the beauty of the landscape with which he felt in spiritual harmony—an early expression of his transcendental world view. Knox developed an interest in observing racial types, and disapproved of what he saw as the 786:, he gained a spatial and thematic perspective on living things. If one had the skill, all living beings could be arranged in their correct placing in a notional table, and one would see both internally and externally the elegant variation of their organs and anatomy according to the principles of connection, unity of composition and compensation. 402:

offered him a partnership at his anatomy school in Surgeon's Square, Edinburgh. In order for his lectures to be recognised by the Edinburgh College of Surgeons, Knox had to be admitted to its fellowship; a formality, but, at £250, an expensive one. At this time most professorships were in the gift of

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leap. In 1857 he wrote: "The conversion of one of these species into another cannot be so difficult a matter with Nature, especially when all or most of the specific characters are already present in the young. Thus a given species may perish, but another of the same consanguinité takes its place in

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In his writings Knox synthesised a perspective on nature from three of the most influential natural historians of his time. From Cuvier, he took a consciousness of the great epochs of time, of the fact of extinction, and of the inadequacy of the biblical account. From Étienne Geoffroy St-Hilaire and

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in which he argued that each race was suited to its environment and "perfect in its own way." Additionally, Knox wrote a book on fishing in Scotland, which became his best-selling work. In 1854 his son Robert died of heart disease; Knox tried for a posting to the Crimea but at 63 was judged too old.

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Little is known of Knox's wife, Susan Knox, whom he married in 1824. According to Knox's friend Henry Lonsdale the marriage was kept secret as she was 'of inferior rank.' During his time in Edinburgh, Knox lived at 4 Newington Place with his sisters Mary and Jessie, while Susan and his four children

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military hospital (near Waterloo) impressed upon him the need for a comprehensive training in anatomy if surgery were to be successful. Knox was intelligent, critical and irritable. He did not suffer fools gladly and—in an aside with terrible consequences for his future career—he was critical of the

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began to harry him, and by June 1831 they had procured his resignation as the Curator of the museum he had proposed and founded. In the same year he was obliged to resign his army commission to avoid further service in the Cape. This removed his last source of guaranteed income, but fortunately his

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by the courts. This led to a chronic shortage of legitimate subjects for dissection, and this shortage became more serious as the need to train medical students grew, and the number of executions fell. In his school Knox ran up against the problem from the start, since—after 1815—the Royal Colleges

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In November 1827, William Hare began a new career when an indebted lodger died on him by chance. He was paid £7.10s (seven pounds & ten shillings) for delivering the body to Knox's dissecting rooms at Surgeons' Square. Now Hare and, his friend and accomplice, William Burke, set about murdering

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advocated "a common material origin of life and its evolution by a process of saltatory descent"; that is to say, new species arose not by gradual change but by sudden leaps due to shifts in embryonic development. Knox tentatively concluded that "simple animals ... may have produced by continuous

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made its own practical anatomy class compulsory in the mid-1830s. Knox continued to purchase cadavers for his dissection class from such shadowy figures as the 'Black Bull Man,' but after the 1832 Anatomy Act made bodies more available to all anatomists, he quarrelled with HM Inspector of Anatomy

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Knox wrote that he was concerned to prove the existence of a generic animal, "or in other terms, proving hereditary descent to have a relation primarily to genus or natural family". This way, he could lay claim to a stability in the natural order at the level of the genus, but let species be

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Knox left for London after the death of his wife (the remaining children were left with a nephew). He found it impossible to find a university post, and from then until 1856 he worked on medical journalism, gave public lectures, and wrote several books, including his most ambitious work,

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is another crucial addition to the Knoxian way of looking at nature. Goethe thought that there were transcendental archetypes in the living world which could be perceived by genus. If the natural historian were perspicacious enough to examine the creatures in this correct order he could

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Knox's interest in race began as an undergraduate. His relevant political views were radical: he was an abolitionist and anti-colonialist who criticised the Boer as "the cruel oppressor of the dark races." Knox is generally considered to be a

1078:(episode #70 "Deliveries in the Rear"), a callous surgeon (loosely based on Knox) turns a blind eye to "resurrectionists" who murder to supply corpses for anatomy classes – until he goes insane upon finding the latest victim is his fiancée. 1330:

Knox, Robert (1815). "On the relations subsisting between the time of the day, and various functions of the human body; and on the manner in which the pulsations of the heart and arteries are affected by muscular exertion".

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became so prevalent that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch over the body until burial, and then to keep watch over the grave after burial, to stop it being violated.

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from 2001 (which got an animation adaptation in 2009) is probably a reference to the real Robert Knox since both have the same name, physical similarities and were military surgeons specialising in autopsies and

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who took the course 1825–1827). This created a demand for private tuition, and the flamboyant Knox—in sole charge after Barclay's death in 1826—had more students than all the other private tutors put together.

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and returned two weeks later with the first batch of wounded aboard a hospital ship; during the voyage he successfully employed Abernethy's technique of leaving wounds open to the air. His army work at the

258:. Barclay was an anatomist of the highest distinction, and perhaps the greatest anatomical teacher in Britain at that time. Redoubling his efforts, Knox passed competently the second time around. 1811:

The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare and of the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes

2299: 503:, on 2 November 1828 Burke and Hare were caught, and the whole city convulsed with horror, fed by ballads, broadsides, and newspapers, at the reported deeds of the pair. Hare turned 371:. During these years he communicated a number of well-received papers to the Royal and Wernerian societies of Edinburgh on zoological subjects, including a paper suggesting that the " 3527: 479:

had increased the anatomical work in the medical curriculum. If he taught according to what was known as 'French method' the ratio would have had to approach one corpse per pupil.

866:(1960). Written and directed by John Gilling, the film is a reasonably accurate depiction, allowing for some dramatic licence and time constraints, of the Burke and Hare story. 518:

Knox was not prosecuted, which outraged many in Edinburgh. His house was attacked by a mob of 'the lowest rabble of the Old Town,' and windows were broken. A committee of the

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Richards E. 1988. The 'moral anatomy' of Robert Knox: a case study of the interplay between biological and social thought in the context of Victorian scientific naturalism.

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Knox, Robert. The Races of Men: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Influence of Race over the Destinies of Nations. 2nd ed. London: Henry Renshaw, pp. 542, 546, 548-9, 563.

659:; this means Celts. If left to themselves, they would clear them out, as Cromwell proposed, by the sword; it would not require six weeks to accomplish the work. But the 600:, including biographer Alan Bates, who considers such claims to be "exaggerated". Robert Knox once wrote that he believed all human races to descend from an original ' 3479: 530:

classes were more popular than ever, with a record 504 students. His school moved to the grander premises of Old Surgeons' Hall in 1833 but his class declined after

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exonerated him on the grounds that he had not dealt personally with Burke and Hare, but there was no forgetting his part in the case, and many remained wary of him.

2661: 319:' contempt for the indigenous peoples. However, after an abortive Xhosa rebellion against the colonial forces, he was involved in a retaliatory raid commanded by 219:

Robert Knox was born in 1791 in Edinburgh's North Richmond Street, the eighth child of Mary (née Scherer) and Robert Knox (d. 1812), a teacher of mathematics and

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which was published the following year. He joined the army and was commissioned Hospital Assistant on 24 June 1815, after having studied for a year under

254:. The final recorded event of his university years was his just failing the anatomy examination. Knox joined the "extramural" anatomy class of the famous 1871:

Richards, Evelleen (1994). "The "moral anatomy" of Robert Knox: the interplay between biological and social thought in Victorian scientific naturalism".

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space: it is a question of time... Thus parenté extends from species to genus and from genus to class and order, in characters not to be misunderstood."

3680: 308: 937:" (1884) The character Mr K- in the short story "The Body Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson, is clearly a reference for Robert Knox. Later filmed 2449: 1684: 612:

to defend the "much maligned races" of the Cape against accusations of cannibalism, and to rebuke the Dutch for treating them like "wild beasts".

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He turned his sharp wit on the elders and the clergy of the city, satirising religion and delighting his students. Knox routinely referred to the

1017:(Series 1, Episode 13) includes a sketch about Robert Knox, in which the story of the body-snatching cases is told in a song. Knox is played by 3645: 395:

for a Museum of Comparative Anatomy, which was accepted, and on 13 January 1825 he was appointed curator of the museum with a salary of £100.

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Knox's views on humanity gradually shifted over the course of his lifetime, as his initially positive views (influenced by the ideals of

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of 1832 widened the supply, the main legal supply of corpses for anatomical purposes in the UK were those condemned to death and

335:, who were to remain his heroes for the rest of life, to populate his later medical journalism, and to become the subject of his 1174: 3695: 3670: 3047: 2874: 568: 526: 392: 250:. He was twice president of the Royal Physical Society, an undergraduate club to which he presented papers on hydrophobia and 3710: 3625: 2570: 2414: 2234: 2207: 2124: 2069: 1822: 1668: 1633: 1477: 1314: 1191: 1157: 300:

with casualties at the Battle of Waterloo. After a further trip to Belgium he was placed in charge of Hilsea hospital near

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Fish and fishing in the lone glens of Scotland, with a history of the propagation, growth and metamorphoses of the Salmon

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and disagreements with professional colleagues ruined his career in Scotland. Following these developments, he moved to

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perceive—aesthetically—the archetype that was immanent in the totality of a series, although present in none of them.

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the city’s poor on a regular basis. After 16 more transactions, each netting £8-10, in what later became known as the

348: 3503: 3447: 2615: 768: 190:) gave way to a more pessimistic view. Knox also devoted the latter part of his career to studying and theorising on 155:(4 September 1791 – 20 December 1862) was a Scottish anatomist and ethnologist best known for his involvement in the 2024: 706: 332: 187: 3471: 2516: 1814: 728: 2560: 2506: 1899: 1055: 3463: 3327: 3277: 3262: 2900: 2700: 1183: 702: 2605: 926:, which deals with the perceptions and perspectives of different races, nationalities and stations in society. 235:, where he was remembered as a 'bully' who thrashed his contemporaries "mentally and corporeally". He won the 3660: 3487: 2705: 939: 735: 615:

From the perspective of a Lowland Scot Protestant, Knox's racist works espoused extreme racial hostility to

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Engravings of the nerves: copied from the works of Scarpa, Soemmering and other distinguished anatomists

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