CT Scans Reveal Jeremy Bentham’s Painful Teeth

Almost two centuries after his death, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham has just had his head put through a CT scanner. The scans, run by University College London (UCL), suggest he lived with severe tooth and jaw pain, which matches what he wrote in a letter in 1830. They also answered a few questions about what is actually inside the preserved head that has become one of UCL’s best-known objects.

A Philosopher Who Gave His Body to Science

Bentham died in London on 6 June 1832. Five days later, on 11 June, Richard Grainger carried out a public dissection. Bentham is thought to be the first person on record to state a legal wish for his body to be used by science after death, and he made that wish at the age of 21.

His friend Thomas Southwood Smith then built what Bentham called an auto-icon, meaning a “self image”. It is Bentham’s skeleton dressed in his own clothes. Smith tried to preserve the real head as well, but the result looked too grim to show. He commissioned a wax head for the display, and the real head now sits in a secure conservation safe at UCL. The auto-icon itself is open to visitors daily at the UCL Student Centre, next to the exhibition “Two Centuries Here”.

Scanning Without Touching

UCL turns 200 in 2026, and the project was part of that anniversary. Curators from UCL Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science asked for the study, and scientists from the UCL Hawkes Institute and the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering made the scans possible, with Bentham scholars on the team. The university also released a short film, “Bentham Revealed”. The release does not name the scanner or the operators.

The reason for choosing CT is simple. As Liz Blanks, curator of UCL Science and Pathology Collections, put it, “CT scanning is non-destructive, which is important for objects that are historical importance such as this one.” The scan also produced a 3D print of the skull.

What the Scans Show

The teeth and lower jaw are in very poor condition. The researchers read that as a sign of considerable pain during Bentham’s life, and the release summary mentions arthritis in the jaw, though the full text does not spell out the detail. Written records back the idea up. In an 1830 letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bentham wrote, “I have never been fond of having my teeth drawn.” Source reports describe him accepting brief pain to escape constant pain, which suggests he knew exactly how bad it was.

Two other findings stand out. First, Bentham’s brain was removed, but some dura mater, the tough outer membrane around the brain, remains inside the skull. That puzzled the team when they looked at an X-ray taken about ten years earlier, and the CT scan gave a clearer view. Second, the glass eyes are far more detailed than most people expect, with an anatomically correct optic nerve shape. A hole at the top of the skull would have held a metal rod that fixed the head to the body of the auto-icon.

Why Bentham Would Probably Approve

Dr Tim Causer, a Principal Research Fellow at the Bentham Project, says Bentham would have approved of the scan: “Bentham was of the view that you can’t advance knowledge without experimentation and observation.” That fits a man who built his philosophy around evidence and who offered his own body as a teaching tool.

Tannis Davidson, Head of Zoology and Science Collections at UCL, calls the auto-icon “a unique object of great significance to UCL”. The team also hopes the scan data could one day let researchers and teachers 3D print Bentham’s skull for research, teaching and conservation. The work follows other non-invasive UCL projects, including a scan of a sealed jar of moles at the Grant Museum of Zoology, which stayed closed because the preserving liquid is toxic.

What Is Still Open

This is a press release and film, not a peer-reviewed paper, so the findings are the team’s own reading of the scans. The pain interpretation rests on the condition of the teeth and jaw plus the 1830 letter, not on any direct record of his symptoms. What the scans do give is a much clearer picture of one of history’s strangest relics, without a single touch on the fragile head itself.

Sources

• UCL news release (8 Nov 2026), distributed via EurekAlert: eurekalert.org/news-releases/1150660
• UCL news page: ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/nov/ct-scanning-centuries-old-head-jeremy-bentham
• Archaeology News Online Magazine (14 Nov 2026): CT scans of Jeremy Bentham’s preserved head

Image: Jeremy Bentham’s preserved head on display at a temporary exhibition in UCL’s main building. Credit: Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.