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 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

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
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

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 they’re 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 1700’s: 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 didn’t want to be on an anatomist’s Christmas list

11. 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

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
They’d taken to smothering alcoholics
Knox didn’t ask questions

13. 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

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 didn’t 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 Dr. Frankenstein Pet Cemetary
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 public’s point of view has changed