Graverobbers R Us (but if we can’t find the right corpses…)

Medicine has a long (several thousand year) history of graverobbing.

You see, for most of the history of medicine, examining actual bodies has been considered, well, sacrilege. And that didn’t even come from the monotheistic tradition (although the Torah made the rules about dealing with the dead very clear)–it dates all the way back as far as history can reach. Dead people were treated with respect, even by Neanderthals.

So what is a good medical scholar to do?

Hippocrates didn’t do dissections. He relied, apparently, on battlefield injuries for his anatomy. Galen dissected pigs. And monkeys. We all know how many hilarious bits of inaccuracies crept into obstetrics and gynecology from this plan (and stuck for a couple thousand years. In fact, Vesalius, the great anatomist of the Renaissance, was roundly critiqued by his contemporaries for disagreeing with the mighty Galen).

Serious docs who wanted to understand real human anatomy dug it up.

While the stories of Renaissance artists huddling in basements over illicit corpses may not be entirely accurate (there is some disagreement as to whether the Church outright banned human dissection or just really, really discouraged it), Vesalius WAS forced to flee to the Ottoman Empire to avoid the Inquisition. Regardless, we can definitively state that there weren’t a whole lot of available subjects, legitimately, that is. Graveyards, though, were full of ‘em.

The profession of graverobbing, nicely delineated in Dickens, was very lucrative. All those Enlightenment gentleman scientists (no one could afford to be a scientist unless he had an independent income) were willing to pay handsomely for a well-preserved  anatomical specimen.

Britain, in the 18th century, attempted to stem this heinous practice by making the corpses of executed prisoners available to medical schools and physicians. But the execution rate dropped as the Enlightenment took hold, leaving a gap between supply and demand. This gap was most embarrassingly filled in 1828 Edinburgh by Burke and Hare, two enterprising Irishmen. They murdered 17 people and sold the corpses to Dr. Knox, the anatomy lecturer at Edinburgh Medical College.

The obstetric anatomist was at an even greater disadvantage. Very few convicted murderers happened to be pregnant. Funny how that worked.

In the mid-eighteenth century, William Hunter and William Smellie each published very detailed anatomical atlases of the gravid uterus. They were landmark publications, on the shelf of every physician through the early part of the 20th century. They were hailed as the first man-midwives to  put the Enlightenment ideals to use in the brand new science of obstetrics.

No one asked where they got the bodies. Until now.

Historian Don Shelton has analyzed the dissection drawings in these publications and come up with the astounding number of 35-40 women. And pointed out that it was rather rare for a woman 8-9 months pregnant to just up and die of natural causes, even in 18th century England. Dying in childbirth, yes. Pre-delivery, not so much.

He’s pretty sure that the two anatomical rivals procured their dissection material by paying for the murders of young, pregnant country girls who arrived in London in pursuit of a better life. Who’d miss them in the big city? They used them to experiment with that tricky C-section, and get better anatomy at the same time.

Just another time honored tradition.

Send this to the person bothering you today!

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl Google

Hugg Jamespot Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinkedIn LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb

Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Twitter Webride Windows Live Worlds Movies Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed or Email Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

Related posts:

1. Algebra, Alchemy and Albucasis
2. Medicine Goes Dark
3. Dawn
4. The Glory that was Rome
5. You Say Hysteria, I Say…???

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.