Home truths about anatomy

When I was a small boy, my grandparents used to take the News of the World. I wasn't allowed to read it, presumably because, in the advertising slogan of the time, “All human life was here.” In those days, all human life was precisely what parents were there to protect children from.

I can't help thinking of that slogan whenever I look through the 19 volumes of Household Words, the journal that Dickens edited between 1851 and 1859. Who can resist articles entitled “Bankruptcy in Six Easy Lessons,” or a true story that begins “Our hero was hanged… at the age of twenty”? It continues, “[His autobiography] appeared three or four days after his execution, with a …