Mary Roach is a treasure. According to the book, corpses are also used to calibrate crash test dummies. It’s necessary to do that as the population becomes more obese.
Interesting thread. I, too, enjoyed Mary Roach’s Stiff. Well worth a read. The last chapter is about the future of cadaver disposal, including a Scandinavian freeze-drying technique which sounds like it has potential.
My grandma’s neighbor used to tell a story about her son, the dentist.
"When he was in dental school, they needed to practice on cadaver heads. The first time he went in to work on his head, he opened up the bag, and it was his best friend, who had recently died in a motorcycle accident. He closed up the bag and left.
He called me, sobbing. ‘I can’t do it, Mom. It’s Jake!’
I said, ‘Son, being a dentist is your life’s goal. You go back in there and do what you have to.’
And he bucked up and did it. Now he’s a very respected dentist."
I can not speak to the veracity of the story. She was a very weird woman, but a good friend to my very normal grandma.
A while back, there was a story about a man who was quite upset when he found out that yes, his mother did donate her body to science, but he never expected that “science” meant that her body would be blown up in an military IED test.
He just wanted to warn other people that if they generically say “donate to science”, this could potentially happen, and some people might object to that, for themselves or a loved one.
That does sound apocryphal.
The long-defunct magazine “OMNI” once put out a call: “Those of you who had to do cadaver dissection - did you ever get the body of someone you knew?” They did get one response; IIRC it was a female medical student who took the cover off, and it was a distant relative who had died a couple years earlier, and finally her turn came. She was reassigned another cadaver, and the body was sent to another school.
fac.utk.edu
That is exactly what I would expect to happen in this scenario, neighbor lady’s story notwithstanding.
Yep - that’s my plan! I even have my outfit picked out! See you down on the farm, needscoffee!
I thought this sounded like a Snopes-style legend, which turns out to be the case - but it’s not always a legend.
More chilling - when your cadaver isn’t actually dead, climbs up off the table and walks away.*
*yeah, I know it’s a gag.
I wish you hadn’t spoiled it. I really would like to know how far I would have made it into that article before I caught on.
I’m intrigued to learn this is an ancient legend. It makes me deeply curious about the origin of the story I was told as a child. Was Grandma’s neighbor just spinning a tall tale? I’m fairly certain she really did have a dentist son. Maybe he had pranked her years before, and she really believed the story herself? I’m so much more curious now.
The “nationwide recall of human cadavers” didn’t help?
I think if an anatomy cadaver really stood up off the table and walked out of the lab it would definitely lead to a full-stop on dissections until the procedures could be reviewed.
Of course, if such a thing had really happened I undoubtedly would have heard about it before now.
In reality, there have been cases where someone is found to still be alive after being sent to the morgue.
Yes, but I expect there are a few steps between the morgue and the anatomy lab.
I once read an account of the 1864 Battle of New Hope Church, Ga. in which a soldier who was about to be buried, after having been shot and thought killed, regained consciousness, spoke up and said he’d rather go to the field hospital instead.
That’s pretty funny. There’s also the story of the jockey who “died” in an accident at a racetrack, was pronounced dead and taken to a hospital morgue. There he woke up, found the door, ran out and hailed a cab to take him back to the racetrack.
(Link to Wikipedia article on Ralph Neves.)
Yeah, I can’t think of a better way to condition medical students to suppress their disgust instincts.
If garbage collectors still picked up the cans by hand, that’d be a way to do it.
The founder of the big body farm in Tenn is retired but when he dies they are getting his body.
Stiff is very good book as are all Mary Roach books.
UPDATE: I contacted the University of Missouri Medical school to talk things over. I was sent to the website of their “Gift of Body” program. Seems I’m not qualified, as they won’t take bodies from which major organs have been harvested, and for me, organ donation is a higher priority than scientific study. Also the weight limit is 200 pounds. If I weight less than 200 pounds when I die, then it means I died of starvation.