{"id":5139,"date":"2014-09-30T20:29:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T01:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5139"},"modified":"2014-09-30T20:29:48","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T01:29:48","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-september-30-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5139","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for September 30, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Anatomical Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike bodies in the anatomy laboratories of American medical schools today, not one of the bodies used in medical schools in the 19th and early 20th century willed him or herself to end up there. \u00a0These cadavers were either stolen from their graves or claimed by the state: that is, in all likelihood, every single instance required confiscation of the dead. \u00a0These were people whose class, ethnicity, race, or poverty made them vulnerable to dissection – those who in life, and whose families and communities after their death, were least able to resist effectively. \u00a0When we do know the names of men and women whose bodies were delivered to medical schools, it is because their identities came to light in a public scandal, the discovery that the body of a recently deceased relative had gone missing from the grave. \u00a0Ordinarily, though, these bodies were reclaimed before they ever reached the dissecting table.<\/p>\n

American anatomists had long recognized that bodies were best sought from groups whose agrievement was least likely to incite wide public protest: criminals, African Americans, paupers. \u00a0Shortly after the Revolution, enslaved and free blacks appealed to New York City’s Common Council to end medical students’ desecration of their burial grounds, a petition the council ignored. \u00a0After all, one New Yorker argued, “the only subjects procured for dissection are the productions of Africa” and executed criminals, “and if those characters are the only subjects of dissection, surely no person can object.” \u00a0Similarly, in 1825 the dean of a Charleston school asserted that “no place in the United States offers to great opportunities for the acquisition of Anatomical knowledge, subjects being obtained from among the coloured population in sufficient number for every purpose, and proper dissection carried on without offending any individual in the community.” \u00a0In his reckoning, the “community” included only the European-American population of Charleston. \u00a0In Boston, according to a Harvard surgeon, what went far toward resolving the supply problem in the 1840s was “the influx of Irish paupers and the great mortality among them.” \u00a0Into the 20th century, the threat of post-mortem dissection remained a cause for anxiety among at-risk populations such as African-American communities and the inmates of almshouses.<\/p>\n

\"'07<\/a>

’07 Rules!<\/p><\/div>\n

Culled from: Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Anatomical Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Unlike bodies in the anatomy laboratories of American medical schools today, not one of the bodies used in medical schools in the 19th and early 20th century willed him or herself to end up there. \u00a0These cadavers were either stolen from their graves or claimed by the state: that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5139"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5142,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139\/revisions\/5142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}