Body-snatching
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Body-snatching was the secret disinterring of dead bodies in churchyards to sell them for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. Those who practised body-snatching or grave robbing were frequently called resurrectionists or resurrection-men.
- Main article History of anatomy in the 19th century
Before the Anatomy Act in 1832, no licence was required in Britain for opening an anatomical school and there was no provision for supplying subjects to students for anatomical purposes. Therefore, though body-snatching was a misdemeanour at common law, punishable with fine and imprisonment, it was a sufficiently lucrative business to run the risk of detection.
Body-snatching became so prevalent that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch the grave after burial, to stop it being violated. Iron coffins, too, were frequently used, or the graves were protected by a framework of iron bars called mortsafes, well-preserved examples of which may still be seen in Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh.
This practice was also common in other parts of the Commonwealth, such as Canada, where religious customs made it hard for medical students to obtain a steady supply of bodies. In many instances the students had to resort to fairly regular body-snatching.
Today's body-snatchers dissect corpses illegally to derive tissue for transplantation surgery in the form of allografs. Tissue such gained is medically unsafe and unusable. The broadcaster Alistair Cooke's bones were allegedly cut up by body-snatchers before his cremation.
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In Literature
Jerry Cruncher, a character from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, works at night as a resurrection man.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein collects the parts for his creation through body-snatching from many bodies.
A famous literary depiction of the practice is the short story, The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the film adaptation starring Boris Karloff.
Other recent depictions of the trade include James Bradley's The Resurrectionist and Hilary Mantel's The Giant O'Brien.
Reference
Further reading
- J. B. Bailey, editor (1896). The Diary of a Resurrectionist. London. Contains a full bibliography and the regulations in force in foreign countries for the supply of bodies for anatomical purposes, as of its date of publish.
- Vieux Doc (docteur Edmond Grignon) (1930). En guettant les ours : mémoires d'un médecin des Laurentides. Montréal : Éditions Édouard Garand. Digitized by the National Library of Quebec. French language.
See also
References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition{{#if:{{{article|}}}| article {{#if:{{{url|}}}|[{{{url|}}}}} "{{{article}}}"{{#if:{{{url|}}}|]}}{{#if:{{{author|}}}| by {{{author}}}}}}}, a publication now in the public domain.
Robert Knox