'Open up a few bodies: the obscurity that observation alone couldn’t dissipate will evaporate instantly': so said Xavier Bichat in 1801. Philippe Charlier could make it his motto, because the practice of autopsying bodies is not only alive and well, but necessary in both social and scientific terms. The dead are undeniably useful to the living.

And yet — and this is the whole point of this book — in the absence of clear rules concerning dead bodies, we need to reconsider the approaches to it that are still being taught. By examining the social sciences’ role in the curriculum, and in physicians’ approach to dead bodies, Philippe Charlier focuses on the respect due to both the corpse and the family. Because, whether the corpse is recent or ancient, by making the dead body presentable and/or accessible to the non-specialist, the forensic scientist gives individuals’ their identity back.

Whether a body has been dead for 3 days or 4,500 years, whether it is the victim of a murder that needs to be investigated or a 19^th-century Maori head kept in a French museum whose return is being demanded by New Zealand, every corpse deserves the respect due to any individual. But giving a larger place back to the social sciences in forensic science – and in medical practice more generally – shouldn’t prevent scientists from doing their work. The author of this essay is trying to strike a balance between those two objectives.