So, uh, this is a weird and entirely hypothetical question, which I feel sick and twisted for even asking, but what’s the internet for if not for making you feel dirty?
I’ve been reading about Jack the Ripper. A common theory is that he likely had some degree of surgical training; this is based on the fact that some of his victims had organs removed apparently with some degree of precision (ie, at least not by pick-axe). Which makes me wonder…
Imagine we’ve got a serial killer who doesn’t have training in cutting things apart: no surgical training, nor for that matter are they a hunter who routinely butchers dead deer or anything like that. He’s got his victim in his basement. The victim is dead. Our killer decides he wants a specific organ - a kidney, gall bladder, whatever. On a scale of “just like cutting out a coupon” to “he’s going to make an ungodly mess and end up with something unrecognizable”, how easy is it for our killer to extract a single, intact organ from the body? Obviously, the well-being of the dead guy is no longer relevant, so I’m wondering strictly about how feasible it is for someone with no training to cut into a human body and get something out intact. I’m inclined to think it would vary significantly from organ to organ, but then again, for all I know, it would be impossible to see anything clearly without proper surgical tools.
(Again: all hypothetical, and yes I’m aware that I’m a seriously warped person for even wondering about this, let alone posting it…)
I’ve cleaned lots of fish and small game, and noticed when scooping out the “guts” that several pieces that looked like identifiable organs came out relatively intact. Based on that experience, I suspect that if one knew what a kidney looked like, it oughta be relatively easy to grab one, especially where the survival of the “donor” is moot. I think you’d want to do maybe an inverted “Y” shaped incision along the rib-line, then peel back the skin to choose your prize. I’d expect any sharp knife to be adequate for the task.
Similarly speculating, but organs largely seem pretty self-contained from watching medical documentaries like House. Cleanly separating them would seem to be much easier for a layman like myself than, say, finding them in the first place. I want your spleen? Great! I’m sure it’s in your body cavity somewhere, but it could be anywhere from the back of your throat to your groin, and I’m doubt I’d recognize it when I got it. Kidneys, liver, heart, would be easy, I think. Lungs maybe not so much – it seems like they’d be pretty fragile, especially uninflated.
I’m a relatively young med student, so if someone with more experience with cadavers comes along, feel free to discount this. Like the above, it’s mostly speculation.
I think the abdominal organs would be doable; small intestine, large intestine, stomach etc. providing you were careful enough to separate them from all the attachments they have to the body wall and each other. Some organs, such as the kidneys, are retroperitoneal, meaning they’re behind a sort of membranous sheath. Your serial killer may not notice them if they’re busy digging everything out of the main cavity.
In terms of the chest cavity, I think you’d need some pretty heavy duty tools in order to crack open the ribs and sternum, so I’m not sure if the heart and lungs would be accessible. If you could access them though, the lungs might be removable - but that’s only based on my handling fresh animal lungs and preserved human ones, so I’m not 100% sure.
If you want to remove the heart you go in through the diaphragm, not through the ribs. Open the paunch. scoop out the guts, remove/cut through the diaphragm and the heart can the be removed relatively neatly.
On the program “Dr. G, Medical Examiner” Jan Garavaglia uses a branch lopper to get through the rib cage. They don’t show her doing it in great detail, of course, blurring certain parts of the picture, but she gets through it pretty darn fast. Of course, she’s had some practice, but loppers are common gardening tools, cost about $20 last time I shopped for one (I wish to assure the community I use them ONLY on branches!), and are readily available.
Given that there’s speculation Jack the Ripper worked in the butcher trade, it wouldn’t have taken a lot for him to figure out how to remove an intact kidney (since there was no tissue typing/DNA analysis back then it’s not 100% that the kidney(s) he sent to boast of his killings actually came from victim(s) and not from a person that died of natural causes). Human anatomy was also well known in the period the murders took place and he could have read textbooks on the subject.
I’m not sure if I could do a kidney, but when I was younger I gained a fair amount of experience with other organs. Some were more difficult than others, and of course YMMV. If need be, I’m confident I could harvest:
[ul]
[li]Broken heart[/li][li]Wrenched ankle[/li][li]Butterflies in the stomach[/li][li]Water on the knee[/li][li]Spare ribs[/li][li]Writer’s cramp[/li][li]Charley horse[/li][li]Funny bone[/li][li]Wish bone[/li][/ul]
Though I managed it once or twice, I’m much less confident in my ability to successfully remove the breadbasket.
Only if you can get through the back ribs without cutting the kidney. The kidney’s probably one of the *hardest *to harvest, actually. I think only the pancreas might be trickier, but that’s because it’s fairly diffuse and easy to tear through; it’s not a hefty organ.
One thing to remember: the human body contains a staggering amount of blood. More than most people would expect, and certain to make any field dressing sans exsanguination an exercise in making quite the mess.
Interesting - I assumed the kidneys were fairly un-protected and easy to get at.
To your first point - true enough. I’m just curiously fond of the idea of Jack the Ripper as a nice, educated young man gone terribly wrong.
To your second point: Yes, I do. I nearly drove my roommate away my freshman year of college when she casually asked what I was reading, and I truthfully answered that it was a book about, basically, various things that may or may not happen to dead bodies. (This book. Very interesting read). Apparently some people find some of my academic interests strange and off-putting.
Nice. This list totally makes me smile.