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