Today’s Dual Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Shortly after 400 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato came to the conclusion that there must be fundamental difference between body and soul. He saw the body as only a temporary housing for the soul. This school of thought, known as the dualism of body and soul, provided the necessary foundation for preserving human specimens. The conviction that the soul exists independently of the body made it permissible to open up the body once the soul had departed after death. It was in this spirit that Herophilos and Erasistratos undertook the first dissections of human bodies in Alexandria, where, following the death of Alexander the Great, King Ptolemy I had established a medical school in 320 BC. Dissections were performed on the bodies of executed prisoners, probably in public.
Although first expressed by Plato, the philosophical premise of the dualism of body and soul later finds its way into the Bible, where Paul says the following about the new body to come after the resurrection: “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ … But God will give them a body as he sees fit…” (Cor. I, 15:35-38)
Culled from: Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies