From Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

1
From Stiff the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

• By Mary Roach

2
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 schools do something similar
• Students sing Green Days Time of your life
• Students read poems
• Didnt always used to be this way
• Few sciences are as rooted in shame, infamy, and
  bad PR as human anatomy

3
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

4
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.

5

• English schools needed bodies to keep students.
  Otherwise theyd 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

6
Today

• Strict interpretations of Koran forbid use of
  bodies, even non-muslim bodies.
• Jan 2002, NY Times interview with med student in
  Kandahar reveals theyre still doing what Harvey
  did.

7
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 1700s tuition
  could be paid in corpses rather than cash.

8

• Instructors did it too
• Thomas Sewall
• Harvard Graduate
• Helped found George Washington University
• Doctor to 3 presidents
• Convicted 1818 of body snatching

9

• 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

10
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 didnt want to be on an anatomists Christmas
  list

11
Where theres crime theres 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

12
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
• Theyd taken to smothering alcoholics
• Knox didnt ask questions

13
Burke was discovered

• 25,000 came to watch Burke hang,
• Hare was granted immunity
• Burkes 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
14

• 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 didnt help public
  sentiment.
• A mob came and burned an effigy of him

15
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

16
From Literature

• Tale of Two Cities
• Jerry Cruncher spent his nights as a
  resurrectionist
• Dr. Frankenstein
• Pet Cemetary

17
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

18
Belgian Andreas Vesalius

• Dissected corpses of criminals body snatched
• He figured out lots of stuff
• Why did we ever need anyone after that?

19

• 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.

20

• 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 publics point of view has changed