Medical History, Mary Shelley, & Frankenstein

*Medical events are listed in bold text.

1791: Luigi Galvani publishes on galvanism, the result of his years of research on the topic.

1797: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is born in London.

1803: Giovanni Aldini does a public demonstration of electro-stimulation, using the corpse of an executed criminal in London. Erasmus Darwin (father of Charles Darwin) publishes Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life.

1814: Mary meets poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and elopes with him to France.

1816: While vacationing with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and others in Geneva, Mary begins writing the story that will become Frankenstein.

1818: Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus is published for the first time.

1819: John Polidori publishes The Vampyre.

1822: Percy Shelley dies in a boating accident in Italy and is cremated there.

1823: Mary moves back to London with her son and works on editing Shelley’s poems for publication. The first theatrical production of Frankenstein is produced.

1826: Mary’s post-apocalyptic novel The Last Man is published.

1828: William Burke and William Hare perform a series of murders in Edinburgh, selling the corpses to Dr. Robert Knox to be used as dissection specimens at the medical college.

1832: British Parliament passes the Anatomy Act 1832, making it legal to dissect corpses besides only those from executed murderers.

1851: Mary Shelley dies at 54, in London, of what the doctor believes is a brain tumor.

1859: Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species is published.

1910: The first motion picture of Frankenstein (a 16-minute silent film) is produced.

©2018 John Martin Rare Book Room, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, 600 Newton Road, Iowa City, IA 52242-1098. Image: Illustration by Barry Moser from Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly (Pennyroyal Press, 1983).