Hidden Histories of Decline: Autopsy, George II's Heart Attack, and the Dying Condition in Clarissa and Tristram Shandy," New Windows on a Woman's World: Essays for Jocelyn Harris

DOODY, MARGARET ANNE. "Hidden Histories of Decline: Autopsy, George IPs Heart Attack, and the Dying Condition in Clarissa and Tristram Shandy," New Windows on a Woman's World: Essays for Jocelyn Harris, ed. Colin Gibson and Lisa Marr. Vol. 1. Dunedin, NZ: Otago, 2005. Pp. 3-31.

With the advent of the newer physiology, the eighteenth-century concept of illness changed metaphorically from a sudden assault to chronic wasting. This evolution, recorded in narrative fiction, also manifested itself in changing attitudes toward dissection and autopsy, from bodily intrusions either accompanying criminal punishment or investigations of possible murderous plots (as in Burnet's account of the death of Charles II) to the more modern notion of discovering the internal cause(s) of death. Hence the autopsy of George ? uncovered his "heart attack": "This royal Body has not suffered an assault from without. The inner body has given up of...