̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - dissection

Lines of Thought: Understanding Anatomy

sjr81 — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:54:37 +0000

Since March, some of the world’s most valuable books and manuscripts have been on display as Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library celebrates its 600th birthday with a once-in-a-lifetime free exhibition of its greatest treasures.

̽��ֱ��objects in Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World, which will close to the public on September 30, communicate 4,000 years of human thought through the Library’s unique and irreplaceable collections. More than 70 per cent of the exhibits are displayed to the public for the first time.

̽��ֱ��exhibition investigates through six distinct themes how Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s eight million books and manuscripts have transformed our understanding of life here on earth and our place among the stars.

In Understanding Anatomy, curator Anna Jones reflects on some of the different ways in which the anatomy of the body has been represented over time and for different purposes, both on the page and in 3D.

“For many people the stand-out object of Lines of Thought is Vesalius’ Epitome, published in Switzerland in 1543,” said Jones. “Vesalius specially commissioned for the work to promote his thesis that the practice of dissection was essential to the study of anatomy.

“ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Library’s copy of the Epitome is very special because it’s hand-coloured, probably for presentation to an important patron, and the colouring really brings out the detail in the different layers of the manikin.”

Dissection had been practised during ancient times by the great Roman physician Galen, but had fallen out of use as a teaching method in the west during the middle ages until it was revived during the European renaissance. Early 16th century English students commonly travelled to the great centres of medical education in Italy or France to benefit from the influence of Vesalius and others, and eventually the techniques they learnt there were adopted at home.

“In Lines of Thought we also have the earliest-known written record of a dissection in England,” added Jones. “ ̽��ֱ��book belonged to Thomas Lorkyn, who was Regius Professor of Physic in Cambridge. On 28 March, 1565, Lorkyn hosted one at Magdalene College, using the body of former criminal Richard or Ralph Tiple, recently hanged at Cambridge Castle just across the road.

“ ̽��ֱ��dissection was carried out by a professional surgeon from London, while Lorkyn, the ‘instructor’, read out from a book – quite possibly the one on display here – and the students gathered round to watch and learn.”

Lorkyn left his books to the UL in his will at his death in 1591, the same year that exquisite models of a skeleton and musculature, also on display, were presented to the Library by the leading London barber surgeon John Banister. Such objects highlight that from relatively early on the ̽��ֱ�� Library was a place to find current material for teaching and learning, as well as a repository for safe-keeping.

Learning from the body itself may be the ideal, but the limited supply of cadavers and challenges to preservation are some of the reasons people have looked to models to provide good substitutes for learning anatomy. Paper works well as a relatively cheap medium that you can fold, layer, and cut out, and the exhibits in the exhibition give a flavour of the variety across the ̽��ֱ�� collections as a whole.

“ ̽��ֱ��study and practice of anatomy – seeing and doing – remains an important strand in ̽��ֱ�� teaching and research today,” added Jones. “Lines of Thought reminds us of some of the significant points in the development of our understanding of our bodies and how they function, and crucially how the books and objects on display have played a part in shaping the present.”

A hand-coloured copy of Vesalius’ 1543 Epitome – one of the most influential works in western medicine – and the first written record of a dissection carried out in England are among the objects in our latest film celebrating Lines of Thought at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

̽��ֱ��study and practice of anatomy – seeing and doing – remains an important strand in ̽��ֱ�� teaching and research today.

Anna Jones

Lines of Thought: Understanding Anatomy

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Infant bodies were ‘prized’ by 19th century anatomists, study suggests

fpjl2 — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 07:23:45 +0000

A new study of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge anatomy collection suggests that the bodies of foetuses and babies were a “prized source of knowledge” by British scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and were dissected more commonly than previously thought and quite differently to adult cadavers.

Historical research combined with the archaeological assessment of collection specimens shows that foetus and infant cadavers were valued for the study of growth and development, and were often kept in anatomical museums.

Researchers say that socio-cultural factors and changes in the law, as well as the spread of infectious disease during the industrial revolution, dictated the availability of these small bodies for dissection.

̽��ֱ��study, conducted by Jenna Dittmar and Piers Mitchell from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, is the first to look specifically at how British scientists investigated the changing anatomy of childhood during the 1800s. ̽��ֱ��findings are published today in the Journal of Anatomy.

̽��ֱ��researchers undertook studies of the skeletal collection retained from the former dissecting room of Cambridge’s department of anatomy, with specimen dates ranging from 1768 to 1913.

While the bodies of adults typically underwent a craniotomy - opening of the top of the skull using a saw - the researchers found that anatomists generally kept the skulls of foetuses and young children in one piece. From a total of 54 foetal and infant specimens in the collection, just one had undergone a craniotomy.

Careful study of the bone surface revealed that soft tissues had been gently removed using knives and brushes in order to preserve as much of the bones of the head as possible, although surgical instruments would have been similar to those used on the fully-grown. Tools for other purposes in adults, such as ‘bone nipper’ forceps, were likely used for dividing diminutive ribcages.

̽��ֱ��research suggests that anatomists kept the skeletal remains of foetuses and infants for further study and use as teaching aids, whereas adults were frequently reburied after dissection.

“Foetal and infant bodies were clearly valued by anatomists, illustrated by the measures taken to preserve the remains intact and undamaged,” says Dittmar.

“ ̽��ֱ��skulls appear to have been intentionally spared to preserve them for teaching or display. This may explain why so few children with signs of dissection on their bones have been recovered from the burial grounds of hospitals or parish churches, compared with adults.”

Literature from the late 18th century shows that the size of infant bodies made them preferable for certain ‘anatomical preparations’ in teaching, particularly for illuminating the anatomy of the nervous and circulatory systems, which required an entire body to be injected with coloured wax and displayed.

“ ̽��ֱ��valuable and unique knowledge that could only be obtained from the examination of these developing bodies made them essential to the study of anatomy,” says Dittmar.

“During much of the 18th and 19th century, executed criminals provided the main legal access to cadavers, and it was previously thought that dissection of young children was relatively rare. However, changes in the law may have resulted in infant dissections becoming more common.”

̽��ֱ��Murder Act in 1752 gave the judiciary power to allow executed murderers - almost entirely men - to be used for medical dissection. These felons hardly made a dent in the growing demand for bodies, and a black market flourished.

Bodies acquired (often grave robbed) by gangs of ‘resurrectionists’, or body-snatchers, were usually sold by the inch, so those of infants were not very profitable, although there are records of ‘smalls’ being traded.

̽��ֱ��Anatomy Act of 1832 allowed workhouses and hospitals to donate the bodies of the poor if unclaimed by family, in an attempt to abate the resurrectionists. Infectious diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis were common killers during the industrial revolution, and a major cause of infant death in hospitals and beyond. Workhouses were desperate places, and nearly always lethal to infants.

Until 1838, a legal loophole did not require a stillborn baby to be registered, and a body could be easily sold to an anatomist through an intermediary. But the New Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 may have had the most significant repercussions of any law for infant material in anatomy collections, say the researchers.

̽��ֱ��Act ended parish relief for unmarried women and the availability of assistance from the father of an illegitimate child. Part of Victorian society’s attempt to curtail the illegitimate birth rate, the law succeeded only in contributing to dire situations for poor unwed women, mainly in service positions, who fell pregnant.

“This left very few options for these women: the workhouse, prostitution, abortion and infanticide - all of which were life-threatening,” says Mitchell. By the 1860s, infanticide in England had reached epidemic proportions.

“Our research shows that the major sources of the bodies of very young children were from stillborn babies of destitute mothers, babies who died from infectious diseases, those dying in charitable hospitals, and unmarried mothers who secretly murdered their new-born to avoid the social stigma of single parenthood,” says Mitchell.

“Poor and desperate women at the time of the industrial revolution could not only save the cost of a funeral by passing their child’s body to an anatomist, but also be paid as well. This money would help feed poor families, so the misfortune of one life lost could help their siblings to survive tough times.”

Top inset image: the only foetal skull in the Cambridge to have undergone a craniotomy.

A study of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge anatomy collection dating from the 1700s and 1800s shows how the bodies of stillborn foetuses and babies were valued for research into human development, and preserved as important teaching aids.

Foetal and infant bodies were clearly valued by anatomists, illustrated by the measures taken to preserve the remains intact and undamaged

Jenna Dittmar

Dissected foetal skull dating from the 1800s, originally held in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Anatomy Museum

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ��body snatchers: corpse and effect

lw355 — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 08:40:30 +0000

When you bury family members in a cemetery, you expect them to stay there. Not so 200 years ago, however, when body snatchers prowled the nation’s burial grounds looking for subjects. This lucrative cottage industry was driven by an acute shortage of bodies that were available for dissection by the growing number of medical students.

Now, a new book has amassed, for the first time, archaeological evidence for what happened to the corpses, from dissection and autopsy through to reburial and display. Many of the new findings have never been published before.

̽��ֱ��book reveals how the macabre activities of the body snatchers helped to further the progress of medicine and science by improving understanding of how the human body worked.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researcher Dr Piers Mitchell and colleagues from around the UK have assembled evidence from excavated human skeletal remains from the 1600s to the 1800s. ̽��ֱ��remains were buried close to workhouses, prisons, private anatomy schools and medical schools in Newcastle, Worcester, Oxford and sites in London.

̽��ֱ��archaeological evidence provides a vivid image of what it must have been like to cut up a corpse in order to study its constituent parts.

Moreover, it shows how anatomy was a key area of scientific investigation 200 years ago. “Thanks to the discoveries of the early anatomists,” said Mitchell, from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, “we have come to move towards our modern knowledge of how organs work and what normal anatomy is all about.”

Some of the remains show evidence of amputations performed as training exercises, probably equipping students with the ability to perform the surgery in living individuals. In one instance, the same cadaver had had multiple amputations, as well as their skull and chest opened.

Skeletons of adolescent males, believed to be the remains of executed criminals, had undergone craniotomies to open up the skull to give access to the brain, middle ear and other structures of anatomical interest. Fine cut marks on some skulls showed where the muscles had been carefully peeled away from the bone.

̽��ֱ��bones of dogs, rabbits, cats, cattle, horses, monkeys and even tortoises were also found. Many of the animal bones had saw cuts in the same position as those found in the human skeletons – highlighting the quest to understand comparative anatomy.

One skeleton had been decapitated through the spine with a saw, and several of the skeletons were incomplete, suggesting that dissected limbs were buried elsewhere.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that different bodies were dissected by different medical students at different times means that the same parts of the same body weren’t always available to be recombined together,” said Mitchell. “So we may have a coffin of arms or a coffin of legs, or sometimes the upper part of the body would be present and the lower part of the body would be missing, and they would put material in there such as dissected animal bones or even rocks to balance out the coffin.”

Some anatomical specimens were preserved and retained for future reference, and form part of pathology collections that continue to be used for teaching medical students to the present day.

̽��ֱ��book Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond: autopsy, pathology and display provides unprecedented evidence of dissection and autopsy practices – and the economical use of corpses – as Mitchell explained: “ ̽��ֱ��bodies were physically sawn up and divided, presumably so that different medical students could dissect different parts of the same body before it would have decomposed.”

Perhaps the most infamous providers of corpses to the medical establishment were Burke and Hare, two characters from Edinburgh who took the industry one stage further and murdered their victims to sell their corpses for dissection by the doctors teaching anatomy in the city. Their grisly occupation was exposed on 31 October, Halloween, 1828.

“This sent a signal out to the rest of the country,” said Mitchell. “It created a field change in attitudes as to what people should do with the bodies of the dead. Everyone decided what was more important was that the living got the best treatment from their doctors and that that was given a higher priority over the corpses of the dead.”

̽��ֱ��result was the 1832 Anatomy Act, when it became legal for the corpses of those who died in poorhouses and hospitals who were not claimed by friends or relatives to be used by the private anatomical teaching institutes. “No-one needed to be dug up from the graves anymore and the cemeteries could rest in peace,” added Mitchell.

̽��ֱ��research described here has been published in 'Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond: autopsy, pathology and display' (2012), edited by Piers Mitchell, Ashgate Publishing Company.

For more information, please contact Louise Walsh (louise.walsh@admin.cam.ac.uk) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Office of External Affairs and Communications.

Corpses sold for dissection by body snatchers helped improve understanding of how the human body worked, according to a new book that brings together archaeological evidence from their remains.

̽��ֱ��bodies were physically sawn up and divided, presumably so that different medical students could dissect different parts of the same body before it would have decomposed.

Dr Piers Mitchell

̽��ֱ��Body Snatchers: Corpse and Effect

Andrew Chamberlian.

Craniotomy of the skull.

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