On a frosty day in January 1803, George Forster was executed at Newgate Prison for the supposed drowning of his wife and daughter — and his body was left hanging in temperatures two degrees below freezing for two hours afterwards. Perfectly chilled, he was hastily carted the mile long journey to London’s Royal College of Surgeons’ anatomy theater.
Inside, the room was a see-and-be-seen event, says science historian Iwan Morus. The oval theater was packed with British scientists, dignitaries and doctors, all eyes focused on a wooden slab covered by Forster’s body. At the helm was 40-year-old Giovanni Aldini, a man on a mission, says Morus. “He’d spent most of the last decade working to exonerate his uncle, the great Luigi Galvani,” Morus adds, explaining that Galvani had been dismissed from the faculty at the University of Bologna for refusing to swear allegiance to Napoleon. After losing his position, he died penniless a year later.
