![]() ![]() It also arrives at a time when cultural institutions around the world are reckoning with the ethics of exhibiting human remains to the public. The museum’s announcement follows a years-long campaign by scholars, authors and journalists to fulfill Byrne’s dying request or, at minimum, petition the Hunterian to move his bones into storage. ![]() Per a statement, museum trustees used the closure to discuss “the sensitivities and the differing views surrounding the display and retention of Charles Byrne’s skeleton.” Ultimately, the board decided to remove the bones from view but retain them for “bona fide research” into acromegaly, a disorder in which the body produces too much growth hormone, and gigantism, a similar condition that begins in childhood. When the museum reopens in March after a five-year closure, however, Byrne’s bones will be conspicuously absent. A few years later, Hunter displayed Byrne’s skeleton at his London home-turned-museum as part of an exhibit on the normal and abnormal growth of human bones.Įlizabeth II views the skeleton of Charles Byrne during a visit to the Hunterian Museum in 1962.įor the next 200 years, the skeleton remained on view to the public, serving as a main attraction at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum, which houses Hunter’s extensive collection of anatomical specimens. Though the young man’s companions tried to fulfill his wishes, an anatomist named John Hunter thwarted these plans, reportedly paying someone £500 to open Byrne’s coffin and replace his remains with a heavy weight. As one contemporary newspaper reported shortly after his death at age 22, “The whole tribe of surgeons put in a claim for the poor departed Irish Giant, and surrounded his house just as Greenland harpooners would an enormous whale.” When Charles Byrne, a 7-foot-7 man known popularly as the “ Irish Giant,” was on his deathbed in June 1783, he made a final request of his friends: that his body be buried at sea to stop surgeons from dissecting his remains.īyrne’s fear was well-founded. ![]()
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