None of the members attracted as much public attention as Sir Anthony Carlisle, the Academy’s professor of anatomy from 1808-1824. A police guard was called out to restrain the crowds whenever Sir Anthony lectured; but what stirred the mob was not so much the academic content of the lectures as the auxiliary matter with which he diversified them. Often, for instance, he would have human remains handed round on dinner plates, to better make his point; and for a time he illustrated the operation of the muscular system with the help of eight private soldiers of the Foot Guards who exercised stark naked on the lecture platform.

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