Cutting-edge medical imaging techniques have revealed that Jeremy Bentham, the Georgian philosopher and reformer, suffered from chronic toothache and a jaw riddled with arthritis.
In a new short film, ‘Bentham Revealed’ , an interdisciplinary team of UCL scientists, curators and Bentham scholars describe the project to carry out advanced CT scanning and 3D modelling of the thinker's preserved head.
The new images provide valuable new insights into the life and after-life of UCL’s ‘intellectual inspiration’ as the university celebrates its bicentennial year.
At the age of 21, Bentham is thought to have been the first person on record to have legally registered not merely his consent, but his active preference for his body to be used by science after his death. In light of this, the team are confident that he would have been the first to approve of this new investigation of his mortal remains.
In his last will and testament, Bentham requested dissection and preservation as an auto-icon, a term he coined himself, meaning “self image”. The remains were publicly dissected by Richard Grainger on 11 June 1832, 5 days after Bentham’s death, and the auto-icon was created by Thomas Southwood Smith. It consists of Bentham’s skeleton, dressed in a suit of his own clothes and is currently preserved as part of UCL’s Science Collections.
Smith’s experimental attempt to preserve Bentham’s real head produced a result unsuitable for public display, so he commissioned a wax head to complete the auto-icon, with the real head now kept in a secure conservation safe.
The scanning of the head, which enabled the team to recreate a physical 3D print of Bentham’s skull, was facilitated by the UCL Hawkes Institute and UCL Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, after curators from UCL’s Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science team were curious to learn more about the object.
The resulting CT images show the incredibly poor condition of Bentham’s teeth and lower jaw and point to considerable pain during his lifetime, which the project team were able to corroborate with written records. For instance, in an 1830 letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bentham wrote: “I have never been fond of having my teeth drawn [extracted], but I have more than once submitted to the momentary torment to rid myself of the enduring one”.
The scans also reveal further physiological factors such as tissue structure and the choices made during the head’s preservation, following Bentham’s death in 1832.
Without requiring curators to handle the fragile item, the imaging confirms that Bentham’s brain had been removed from the skull during the preservation process, though some of the outer matter, known as dura mater, remained – something that had perplexed the team when examining an X-ray of the head from 10 years ago. They also show that the glass eyes added to the preserved head are incredibly detailed and shaped to include an anatomically correct optic nerve. The images reveal a hole at the top of Bentham’s skull through which a metal rod would have secured the head to the auto icon’s body.
Tannis Davidson, Head of Zoology and Science Collections (UCL LCCOS) said: “The auto-icon is a unique object of great significance to UCL and part of how we care for it is to monitor and document physical changes over time. This project offers an opportunity to gain greater insights into our important objects and collections and protect them for the future.”
This is not the first time that advanced imaging techniques were used for heritage preservation at UCL. Last year, Dr Erwin Alles (UCL Hawkes Institute) and Professor Adam Gibson (UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering) collaborated with the UCL Grant Museum of Zoology to analyse UCL’s famous jar of moles . This cannot be opened due to the toxicity of the preservation liquid.
Great consideration was taken of the ethics of working with human remains. Dr Tim Causer, Principal Research Fellow at the Bentham Project (UCL Laws), said: “Bentham was of the view that you can’t advance knowledge without experimentation and observation. The scanning of his head has not been done gratuitously, and I think he would have strongly approved of further and more sophisticated observation of his remains.”
In future, the data could be made available for people to 3D print Bentham’s skull to support further research, teaching and conservation efforts. Even after 200 years, UCL is revealing new insights into Jeremy Bentham, whose vision laid the foundations for London’s very first university and whose commitment to widening access to knowledge continues to shape the institution today.
Curator of UCL Science & Pathology Collections, Liz Blanks (UCL LCCOS), said: “CT scanning is non-destructive, which is important for objects that are historical importance such as this one. It allows us to do things like 3D modelling, which then can be used by healthcare professionals, by museum professionals and even by archaeologists to generate new knowledge about our past”.
Bentham’s auto-icon is open to the public daily in the UCL Student Centre, alongside Two Centuries Here, a landmark exhibition marking 200 years since UCL's founding as the first university in London, featuring fascinating and curious stories, objects and artworks. Find out more and plan your visit .
Notes to editors
For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact Sophie Hunter, UCL Media Relations E: sophie.hunter@ucl.ac.uk T: + +44 (0) 20 7504 4194
Watch ‘Bentham Revealed’ on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwPLJSOKyVY&feature=youtu.be
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UCL turns 200 in 2026. Join us for a year of bicentennial events and celebration .