![]() ![]() Worried by the potential inability to distinguish between the states of life and death, two doctors, William Hawes and Thomas Cogan, set up the Royal Humane Society in London in 1774. He was not alone in considering that the boundary between life and death was imaginary and that it might be breached. ![]() So much so that it was not far-fetched that Frankenstein should assert: “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds” (ch. Considerable uncertainty surrounded these categories. 1 Among these were the scientific investigations into the states of life and death. Professor of English and Creative Writingįar from the fantastic and improbable tale that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein now seems to us, the novel was declared by one reviewer upon publication to have “an air of reality attached to it, by being connected with the favourite projects and passions of the times”. Professor Sharon Ruston surveys the scientific background to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, considering contemporary investigations into resuscitation, galvanism, and the possibility of states between life and death. ![]() Featured as frontispiece to the 1831 edition of Shelley’s novel Source: Wellcome Library. Frankenstein observing the first stirrings of his creature. ![]()
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