In the introduction to The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV's Paris Anita Guerrini promises to ‘add another level of complexity to the ongoing historical discussion of the era commonly known as the scientific revolution’ (p. 1). The book that follows does just that, providing an account of the people, places and animals involved in the study of anatomy in and around Paris in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries while providing insight into the role of dissection in the development of science. Beginning with the first chapter, where we learn of a battle over a stolen corpse between the faculty of medicine and the surgical school at Saint-Côme which included archers and took long enough that the much-decayed body was no longer of any use once recovered, and ending with the epilogue which recounts the afterlife of the Paris Academy of Science's Histoire des animaux publication project, The Courtiers’ Anatomists combines fascinating details with an overall narrative of the development of anatomy.

After setting the stage for anatomy and dissection in Paris in Chapter 1 by providing background on the people, the places and the processes by which bodies (animal and human) were obtained, in Chapter 2 Guerrini describes the impact of the two great physiological discoveries of the early seventeenth century – Harvey's circulation and Aselli's lacteal vessels – and then sets forth her picture of how natural history, essentially descriptive in its focus, expanded into the more ‘experimental’ comparative anatomy as dissection and vivisection took their place alongside vacuum studies, transfusions and other investigative procedures employed by members of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Thanks in part to Harvey's methodology and the reactions that followed it, academy members saw these procedures of investigating the body as sources of scientia, or certain knowledge in the Aristotelian sense.

In Chapter 3 the projects of the academy are elaborated upon, especially the study of transfusion, adopted early on by the English but carried out much more meticulously and precisely in Paris. Even though Claude Perrault, who was in charge of the physique section of the academy, published his transfusion findings under his own name, the academy had adopted certain attitudes to its work that, while not always universally followed, affected its overall dissemination and even the historian's ability to recover their original form. These included principles like suppressing individual credit in favour of credit for the academy as a whole and a tendency towards confining the knowledge generated by the academy to its members.

Another facet of the experimental work of the academy was its access to animals in the royal menageries, which allowed members to dissect a variety of exotic species, including an elephant. Animals and publication come together neatly in Chapter 4, devoted to the Histoire des animaux, a large and expensive work that described more than thirty dissected animals from the king's menageries. Its beauty and its many engravings were a testimony to the glory of the king, and its inclusion of both the anatomical details and the natural history of the animals involved neatly encapsulates Guerrini's concept of the co-development of the two in seventeenth-century Paris. The principles behind its production also reflected the policies of credit adopted by the academy.

In Chapter 5, Joseph-Guichard Duverney emerges as an important figure in the next generation of academy members. Animal dissection and an interest in their natural history (including exotic animals like the ostriches at Versailles) continued to be important, as did the development of more material for the Histoire, but with Duverney the important idea of animal mechanism also became prominent, as did the venue of the Jardin du roi where Duverney taught for nearly forty years (which is described in detail in Chapter 6). Publication procedures also began to change as the ideal of suppressing individual credit started to fade and the further printing of editions of the Histoire des animaux suffered, both from financial problems and from Duverney's conflicts within the academy, which he eventually left, taking the manuscript of the Histoire with him.

As Guerrini describes in the epilogue, beginning in the 1730s, after Duverney's death, the publication of the Histoire was revived and new editions were printed. The Histoire and the anatomical projects of the academy, including its supply of exotic animals, had always depended heavily on patronage, and when the king's interest waned, so did they, but their effects lived on. Anatomical study became a science in the seventeenth century, one that accepted dissection as a source of new knowledge. The Courtiers’ Anatomists tells the tale of how this happened in early modern Paris in a rich narrative encompassing all of the actors, from ostriches to kings, who played a role.