LEICESTER, ENGLAND—A lead coffin holding the remains of a Victorian-era doctor noted for his tenderness with patients and his contributions to modern medicine has been found among more than 1,000 burials at Leicester Cathedral by archaeologists from the University of Leicester, according to a BBC News report. The cemetery opened in the late 1820s and closed in 1856. The burials were situated near the cathedral’s song school, which has been demolished to make room for the construction of a new visitor center. Dr. Edward Entwistle Wilkinson was a house surgeon and apothecary at the Leicester Infirmary, and he served as the first resident medical officer at the Leicestershire and Rutland County Lunatic Asylum, before his death from typhus in 1846 at the age of 50. The doctor’s remains will be reinterred in the cathedral. To read about a nineteenth-century cemetery at London Hospital where cadavers were buried after medical experimentation, go to "Haunt of the Resurrection Men."
