From Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
By Mary Roach
Ch 2. Crimes of Anatomy
• University of California San Francisco holds a voluntary 3 hour ceremony at the end of their anatomy lab– Many other school’s do something
similar– Students sing Green Day’s “Time
of your life”– Students read poems
• Didn’t always used to be this way• “Few sciences are as rooted in
shame, infamy, and bad PR as human anatomy
Ancient Eygpt
• 399 B.C. King Ptolemy I encourages dissection– He even came down
and helped– Society was already
used to mummification
• Herophilus: “Father of Anatomy”– Took things too far– Vivisected ~ living
criminals
Jump forward England 18th c.
• Lots of medical schools, few bodies– People believed in a literal,
corporal rising to heaven
• Till 1836 only bodies available were those of executed criminals– It was additional, post-mortem
punishment– Lots of death penalties: You could
be hung for stealing a pig, but killing a man meant being hung and then dissected.
• English schools needed bodies to keep students. Otherwise they’d go to French schools where dying poor at city hospitals could be used.
• Where to get bodies?• William Harvey (famed for
discoveries in circulatory system) brought his parents into class before taking them to the churchyard
Today
• Strict interpretations of Koran forbid use of bodies, even non-muslim bodies.
• Jan 2002, NY Times interview with med student in Kandahar reveals they’re still doing what Harvey did.
Alternative was worse
• Steal corpses from graveyard Body snatching– This was a new crime,
different from grave robbing Just taking the jewelry.
• Have the students do it– At some Scottish schools
in 1700’s: tuition could be paid in corpses rather than cash.
• Instructors did it too• Thomas Sewall
– Harvard Graduate– Helped found George
Washington University– Doctor to 3 presidents– Convicted 1818 of
body snatching
• Outsourcing
• By 1828, 10 full time, ~ 200 part time body snatchers worked from October – May– Earned 1,000 a year
5xs more than average unskilled laborer.
– Could get a body in less than an hour
Dissection = O.K. Disrespect = Not O.K.
• intestines hanging like streamers
• organs getting chewed by dogs
• a spectacle• Body disposal rumors
– Zoo– Feed the birds– Rendered into soaps and
candles– You didn’t want to be on an
anatomist’s Christmas list
Where there’s crime there’s money to be made
• Mortsafes: Iron cages were placed around the coffin
• Double even triple coffins to keep people out.
• Anatomists often made sure to buy these for themselves
Robert Knox of Edinburgh
• Sanctioned murder for medicine
• A well respected man• Bought 15 corpses from
boarding house owner William Hare and his partner William Burke– They’d taken to smothering
alcoholics– Knox didn’t ask questions
Burke was discovered
• 25,000 came to watch Burke hang, – Hare was granted
immunity– Burke’s body was of
course dissected • His skeleton is still on
display at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh
• Also a wallet made of human skin.
Wood carving of Burke & Hare in Edinburgh
• Dr. Knox was never charged, but he should have known.
• Displaying one of the victims, a prostitute in a vat of alcohol in the lab didn’t help public sentiment.
• A mob came and burned an effigy of him
It still goes on
• 1992 Columbia, a garbage scavenger named Oscar Hernandez is clubbed over the head and wakes up in a vat of formaldehyde at the local university.
• Columbian police were found to be selling bodies for 150$
From Literature
• Tale of Two Cities– Jerry Cruncher spent
his nights as a resurrectionist
• Dr. Frankenstein• Pet Cemetary
Is human dissection needed?
• Huang Ti: father of Chinese medicine figured out what Harvey did without dissecting his parents
• Galen was a gladiatorial doctor who dissected apes instead. Thought the heart had 3 ventricles
• Hippocrates thought dissection was cruel, but thought tendons were nerves
• these guys got things wrong
Belgian Andreas Vesalius
• Dissected corpses of criminals & body snatched
• He figured out lots of stuff
• Why did we ever need anyone after that?
• Indeed by 1993 we have the sliced images of a human and more models than we could ever use.
• Why not just have virtual dissection now?
• Some schools are moving that way.
• Some feel human dissection is a rite of passage
• Doctors need to confront death
• That requires desensitizing as a coping mechanism.
• Maybe now that means training as a grief counselor
• Today there are surpluses of bodies donated to science.
• The public’s point of view has changed