The Resurrectionist

Resurrection Shuffle

The Resurrectionist -
The Lost Work of
Dr. Spencer Black
by E R Hudspeth
Quirk Books
ISBN: 9781594746161

Subtitled The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black, E. R. Hudspeth’s book The Resurrectionist is a tale of the fictional 19th century doctor of the title, who specialised in treating mutated humans but who evolves, in the short biography of his, taking up in the first 60 or so pages of this book, into someone who believes that the mythological creatures of man’s past once all existed and that human beings are the natural next stage of various evolutional processes, to get them to their current form. Initially finding no proper evidence to back up to what he comes to believe, he goes absolutely into mad scientist mode and spends his time making various mythological creatures from humans and other animals, patchworking them together to show how the species would have looked in their days on the planet.

It’s a nice little biography done in the best ‘weird fiction’ style... think Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley and H. P. Lovecraft joining forces... and the sinister path of this once respected medical practitioner, forced to pontificate on his theories from travelling side show carnivals (there’s at least one veiled reference to Tod Browning’s Freaks) is quite entertaining and, in terms of the final fate of the character... along with his wife, brother and son... is left much to the imagination of the reader.

The other two thirds or so of the book are a representational printing on the good doctor’s ‘only two copies ever published’ treatise on the matter - The Codex Extinct Animalia - and is mostly pictorial, concentrating on quite wonderful medical diagrams of all the creatures the good doctor manufactured... or indeed discovered or bought from private collectors of such mythological specimens, depending on your interpretation of the ‘biographical’ section of the book. Indeed, I believe the author, E. R. Hudspeth is a working medical illustrator himself so, as you can imagine, his drawings of the inner workings such as the muscles, the skeleture of various key creatures like a mermaid, a pegasus, a centaur, a minotaur etc, are all quite wonderful and certainly worth the price of admission.

Which is why this is, alas, such a short review... there’s a lot of substance to the book but the highlight, which takes up the majority of the page count, is indeed the selection of beautiful medical illustrations of those creatures that the doctor hopes can jog the sense memory so that the human tissue and bone, as it is now, can be stimulated to “unlock the body’s natural legacy of its ancestral past”. I’ve wanted this book for a while now so was delighted to receive one as a Christmas present this year. However, since the book’s first publication, almost eight years ago, something must have happened behind the scenes somewhere. In the back of the book is a web link listed to take the reader who has purchased the tome in question to link to further ‘archival documentation’ and even filmed footage, to further enrich Dr. Spencer Black’s back story. Alas, the link is no longer active so I guess I’ll never know if what I took on board reading between the lines of the biographer is anywhere near to unlocking the final enigma of the man in question.

So that’s a shame but, still, I appreciated The Resurrectionist for what it is and I definitely had a fascinating time with it. Certainly a big recommendation from me if you are into uncanny tales set in the late nineteenth century or admire a good looking medical illustration for sure. This beautiful hardback edition is certainly worth picking up.