Resurrectionists: The Body Snatchers that Built Modern Medicine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
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Before hospitals were safe and dissection was a legal established system, doctors had to study anatomy through morbid ways: paying body snatchers, or resurrection men, to steal fresh bodies from cemeteries. Come learn with me about how this nefarious trade, and sometimes murder, built modern medicine.
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Sources
The Butchering Art by Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris
Art macabre: Resurrectionists and anatomists by Reginald Magee
The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811-1812 By James Blake Bailey books.google.c...
Glasgow Resurrectionists by S.W. McDonald
An Account of the Watch-houses, Mortsafes, and Public Vaults in Aberdeenshire Churchyards, formerly used for the Protection of the Dead from the Resurrectionists by James Ritchie journals.socant...
The infamous Burke and Hare serial killers and resurrectionists of nineteenth century Edinburgh by R. Michael Gordon
Les anatonustes et les r.surrectionnistes en Grande Bretagne: Deuxi.me partie. On tue pour 1'anatomie by S. LeBlond, M.D. europepmc.org/...
Bodysnatchers: A History of the Resurrectionists 1742-1832 by Fido Martin
Reckoning with histories of medical racism and violence in the USA by Ayah Nuriddin, Graham Mooney and Alexandre I R White for The Lancet www.thelancet....
Bodysnatchers: Digging Up the Untold Stories of Britain's Resurrection Men By Suzie Lennox
Haunt of the Resurrection Men: A forgotten graveyard, the dawn of modern medicine, and the hard life in 19th-century London By Kate Ravilious for Archaeology Magazine www.archaeolog...
The Grotesque (and Sometimes Amusing) Exploits of the 19th Century Grave Robbers Known as “Resurrectionists” by Jack Weeks for Medium / the-grotesque-and-some...
Post-Mortem Pedagogy: A Brief History of the Practice of Anatomical Dissection by Connor T. A. Brenna www.rmmj.org.i...
having a body in general is constant body horror
especially if it’s not yours
fr like why do feet look so weird
In being trans could mean that gender dysphoria is body horror ??
Yeah 😒
Along the lines of "medical racism" never forget the horrific Tuskegee Experiment, where black men were deliberately infected with syphilis and left untreated to see how the disease progressed, and it didn't end until 1972
😐
that’s fun. 😐 (HEAVY SARCASM)
They weren't purposefully infected with syphilis, they already had syphilis. The problem is thay they weren't told about that diagnosis and we're denied treatment. Still horrifying, but don't go around spreading misinformation.
I'd love to see Kaz do a video on that. It would be heavy, but I know she'd handle it with care.
@@Janelane529 It wouldn't be the most fun video ever, but I agree with you
it's a story that deserves to be told
Burking should've never went away its so funny of a term.
"Don't go in that alley or you're gonna get Burke'd"
It is a good term, but in the uk might get mixed up with the insult “Berk”. That’s a Cockney rhyming slang shortened from “Berkshire Hunt”. You can probably guess what that rhymes with…😂
I wonder if it’s at all related to the term “murked” (murdered)- murked almost sounds like a portmanteau of burked and murdered.
@lindseyb2777 I think that's actually merc'd, as in killed by a mercenary. I'm certainly no expert though.
Burke my hole
"Oh, Maude, did you hear about Gertrude's son?"
"Why, yes, I certainly have!" Those ghastly scoundrels have Burked him!"
The donating one's body to science problem in the US is a huge quagmire. People who think they are going to be used for medical research or donating their organ can become very messy here with people's parts like teeth being sold to collectors, ending up in museums of varying ethics and status, and so much more.... not much has changed...
Caitlin doughty just recently did a video about people who were literally STEALING BODIES to sell to bone collectors online. Its still a huuuuge problem
John Oliver did a really interesting episode on Last Week Tonight about this topic. Didn't expect it to be this bad, honestly.
@@Tessa_GrI was just about to comment that same thing
yeah, didn't the US army get some grandmas corpse for a "blast test"? I remember that being posted everywhere.
also worked in transplant medicine. Um UNOS while doing the best it can, has some shady AF skeletons in their closets. There is a certain type of human who seems to be willing to sell everything for the almighty dollar. Donors think there is no money being bought and sold, but yeah...oh blood donation. Not that either of these things is bad, please they are forking GREAT and need more, but that some humans will try and profit on the generosity of those in pain & suffering to make themselves rich. It's horrid.
My mother was a special ed teacher and she donated her body because she saw it as a way to continue teaching. The university where she donated (KU) cremates them and sends you the ashes after about a year. They also hold a memorial service each year and families are welcomed to come for the students to be able to thank the families for the donation. There was paperwork that my mom had to fill out to do this, etc. I thought it was very respectful and cool.
the idea of auctioning off your future corpse is so funny to me. like yeah this dude gave me a couple thousand bucks so that when i die he gets to dissect my body as part of an anatomy class for a bunch of medical students. it’s just preordering a cadaver
38:20 Ask A Mortician has a really fascinating video about another scandal that happened at Harvard where someone was buying body parts for art pieces.
She is awesome!!! Hope she is feeling better, recovering, and with all the rest needed.
Oof. The one where the kid saw his mom's arm "waving at him"? That lives I'm my head.
pls tell me the title
Thats why its so important to whistle blow on your co-workers. I know people don't want to get involved but you have keep an eye and protect the rights of these people who donated their bodies to science.
Yes! That was a great and horrying video.
“Why head hurt?”
“Where food go?”
“How legs move?”
I, a proud resident of the 21st century, am *still* asking these questions
"When did Plankton get in there?"
Where food go was actually pretty thoroughly answered for me by taking anatomy. It's kinda gross but pretty wild seeing the stages of digestion and getting to touch the organs that do it.
Why head hurt, the best minds still don't fully know and maybe never will.
As a chronic migraine sufferer, 'why head hurt?' is a very common question in my life
Don't think about the leg thing too hard or you won't be able to move leg anymore.
@@dismurrart6648because there’s a lot of reasons it could hurt
did anyone else cry when they explained how people donating their body are super excited about being able to be a part of science because 😭😭
Yes. I had a cadaver lab class in school and this part was so emotional for me. 😭
@@ComedorDelrico same. Or that we learned how much our person/cadaver (whatever term) had suffered before they passed. Adenocarcinoma of lungs which turned neigh on to stone. We we opened her thoracic cavity I recall how my labmates (we had 3/body) looked in horror at her calcified lung tissue. In physiology lecture we got to see & feel fresh lung tissue (butcher/sheep) and then to go to cadaver lab and see their lungs?! I still recall the look and cried that evening when I got home. Then my school had preceptorships in family medicine, so we dealt with living patients (shadowed the MD) who were on max oxygen due to respiratory illness then next day, yeah, to say were are unaffected was/is and understatement. BTW, it's still fresh and this was in 1998, let's just say once you become a voice for the dead and the living, everyone, live or dead, never leave you. KWIM?
I'm signed up to be a medical cadaver after death and yeah - I'm super excited to help make better doctors because I'm not a normal patient, so hopefully I'll throw them some curveballs! Henrietta Lacks is my personal hero and I've signed up for every medical study I'm eligible for, even after death.
@@inkyjillSame! I’m also signed up to donate my body after death. Coincidentally, reading Henrietta Lacks in high school was a large part of why I made that decision to begin with! :D
No, it's a happy thought, they are excited to serve humanity.
me when kaz talks about one of my niche interests AND i get to think about good omens >>>
Not the Victorian lesbian tragedy episode 😭😭
@@kwowka the way i genuinely screamed when they mentioned good omens
I was looking for this comment 😭
Me too
I somehow missed that Good Omens 2 had come out. So I had to stop watching this video, signed up for an Amazon Prime trial and watched it. And after that I came back to finish this video 😂
@@winterrain11 literally same omg
I saw in china's med school they call the donated cadavers "大体老师“ which roughly translates to body teachers and i remember reading about that and finding that so respectful. The people that do chose to donate their bodies deserves the respect.
The thought of black people feeling less pain is still thought today. I've heard tattoo artists say that their black clients genetically feel less pain so they can go deeper with their needles. Insane.
I have read horror stories of women of color when in labor being ignored because of this and that this ridiculous belief has caused the deaths of women and babies. So you are definitely right this belief is still held. Even more terrifying is that until relatively recently doctors didn't believe babies could feel pain and did surgery on them with no pain killers.
😧That's awful.
Applies to native people as well. My mom and I dont go to the hospital unless we have no other choice. Her only memory when having me, at 18 years old, were the white nurses laughing and telling her to 'not put such a show', clearly under the belief that somehow birthing a child wasnt painful for her, a woman who was barely not a child herself
just a note: deeper isn't better in tattooing. if you go too deep you get blowouts. you specifically want to place the ink between the epidermis and the dermis under it. that depth depends on the individual and the body part. all the other tattoo artists i know will tell you that women tend to sit better than men on the whole but that may be pain tolerance or it more likely is because women are socialized to put up with a lot more pain and discomfort without complaint. certainly thinking that black people have a higher pain tolerance is racist, stupid, and untrue. just saying you wouldn't keep a needle shallower if the client isn't sitting well and you wouldn't go deeper if you think they can take it. you go to the correct depth and if they aren't tolerating it well you take breaks or use ice or sometimes numbing creams, etc
@@spiritussancto oh ya i know that, it's how you basically hamburger the skin. I was just stating a lot of artists (mostly newer) believe you need to go deeper to make the ink show more on darker skin, and they assume that it won't hurt black skin to do so because they "feel less pain."
32:46 i am LOVING the inclusion of like topic specialists as guest appearances 10/10 i love this channel sm
same
I’m a med student (in Europe) and we actually all went to the funeral (or rather, burial or whatever you might call it, in this case) of our ‚body donators‘, as we call them. At my university it was like this; the uni has to provide a good burial on a nice cemetery AND good care of the grave in the future and then there‘s a separate ‘funeral‘ for family‘s and friends and after that one where all med students are expected to attend to pay their respects. It was a really important moment actually, after spending months with these people‘s bodies thanks to their generosity.
I wish I had had this opportunity. I appreciate our cadavers from our class so much and it feels like a missed opportunity.
This should be the kind of thing that should be normalized. Rather than spending loads of money to rest peacefully with god.
I studied physical therapy in school and we had a cadaver lab. The cadavers were pre-dissected by a surgeon and preserved. So we didn't dissect them ourselves, but we could look at them and manipulate them/move things around to see how they attach, etc. It was one of the most fascinating and important experiences of my life. I can't imagine how any textbook, model, or AI rendering could possibly replace it.
We had 3 cadavers which were shared by everyone in my class of about 30 people, and reused for several years. We knew their first names, their occupations, and their cause of death. It might sound weird, but you get attached to them. Not the bodies, but the people who they once were. I developed such a deep sense of gratitude for the gift they gave, I still get emotional thinking about it all these years later.
So...the last enslaved Black person was NOT freed in 1861. Try over 100 years later. In Alabama. I wish I was joking. My dad was born in 1960. So within his lifetime there were still people who didn't know slavery was over. I'm Afro-Native. It's a horrifying reality. May want to add an edit note about this. The information only recently came to light and it's disgusting.
Also there's a book, Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington, that discusses the long, sordid history of Black bodies in use for medical experimentation, right up to the present day.
Slavery is bigger today in the United States than any other point in that Countries history. That's sickening. Destroy the prison industrial system. Free everyone. Reform the laws. Etc...etc..etc
They specifically said in Virginia as the writing was specifically about the practices in Virginia.
They specifically said in Virginia as the writing was specifically about the practices in Virginia.
It is true that one couple in Alabama were unaware until the 1960’s. Which is horrific.
I second this as a Native (Lakota) and knowing the ongoing issues with NAGPRA and the long history of medical experiments on marginalized people.
Chattel slavery? I have a hard time believing that. Being a debt slave? Shit that still hasn’t ended
*"Such a shovel, it seemed a waste not to use it."*
I have a friend who donated her body. She was 20 when she died from an illness and our whole friend group was, understandably, devastated. She was far from perfect but she was definitely a giving and caring person, till the very end. She endured a lot of suffering but she never dwelled on it. She just kept moving forward. She lived like she knew she would die young. She once got us to clean up the waste from littering in a children's playground in her part of the city. She often did things like that, just because she cared for people. Selfless till the end. Rock on, M. I'm sorry that I won't be able to keep our promise either.
My grandpa donated his body to Columbia med school. After their cadaver lab was over and the bodies were cremated, they held a memorial service with all the families where we got a chance to briefly eulogize our loved ones and a few student representatives spoke about their experiences and gratitude.
At the end we ate passed hors d’oeuvres, picked up his ashes, and got to mingle with the med students. It was really bittersweet with a touch of absurdity that my grandpa would’ve been really tickled by lol
This really was a fantastic video and a great interview!
Biomedical student here, we have anatomy lab however they are not full bodies they are plastinated models (human sections covered/injected with plastic to preserve them). We have to sign wavers each year which is very good and there are cameras and a ban on technology in the labs. Everything has a security tag on it with identification tags and if you go past the door with a specimen it goes off. However there is a body in that lab with is over 100 years old without identification and it is classed under "property" they do not deem it to be a person because it was during the body snatching and it has no certificate
Bodies as a whole are needed in the medical field but not in mass supply. Thank you to all the people who have given there bodies so we may progress. We use bodies and a direction tool which is in partnership with the university and it's images and simulations of disections.
When I took cadaver lab we had 3 bodies and a few plastinated brains. I appreciate the education those people gave me.
I agree that we don't need massive supply. I'd never thought about doing the bulk of study on plastinated specimens, but you could see everything from healthy tissue to diseased tissue and it's such a great idea.
I like that in a lot of labs they use fruits and vegetables to simulate flesh.
@@noahboucher125 I'm not sure that works as well as using animal meat tbh
My dad did all the paperwork to donate his body to the medical school down the street from where he lives, we just have to remember to give the card to the people who will collect his body so that they don't take it to the morgue but to the medical school right away instead.
Completely agree with Christine that the cadaver lab is a life changing experience simply from a “bodies are diverse” stance. Our donor body was an 88 year old lady with bad osteoporosis and extreme frailty but the next table over was a very large middle aged man with a lot of adipose tissue so seeing the comparison in muscle bulk, skin thickness, organ size, and where everything is in relation to the others doesn’t really hit you until you see your fellow student still digging away to find something that is so plainly large and obvious in one body that you thought you missed because it had atrophied so much in your assigned body. Also nothing changes you more than hearing a pacemaker go off after hours when you’re alone in a dead silent room at night for extra studying, or when the first person revs up the bone saw to open the skull 😳
Also even assigned sex at birth is (maybe not) shockingly hard to tell the difference between when bodies have been pickled for at least 6 months and you aren’t actively working on the reproductive organs.
This is one of those conundrums where it's good that we made it this far but how are we supposed to feel about how we did it
Regardless we are here NOW. The Past is a different country, all borders are closed. Stop looking at spilt milk, deal with the milk 🥛 in front of you. Learning is a good thing, dwelling on things you can't change is futile. The Serenity Prayer is very wise. Take care.
@@theguest4516You are watching a history channel to always look forward and never back doesn’t help anyone to learn form mistakes or how the past still influence the present.
You are also watching a video about the road that had to be walked to get where we are today and there is still medical abuse going on today you heard on story at the very end where a University that promised that the bodies would get a proper burial lied and just disposed of the bodies in a mass grave so obviously this is still a problem but it got better.
The past has the tendency to always creep into the present to keep your eyes away from it is impossible.
@@Helania12 No, I was commenting on a statement by a troubled young person. That was worrying about things that can't be changed. That you failed to realize that isn't my problem. Have a day.
@@theguest4516 "The past is a different country, all borders are closed." Is an awesome quote. It's okay to look back at the past as long as you realize you can't change it. Too many people don't understand that.
@MatthewTheWanderer That isn't my line. I'm not sure who said it but, it seems to be an English saying. It is good one.
Loved the section with Christine, very touching to hear how they even had a memorial for the bodies
Christine is so real for sharing this. I’ve worked with skeletal remains in 2021 and we were told to treat them with the upmost respect. Which we obviously did, but the remains I worked with were from a hospital cemetery that the contractors knew was there but didn’t care about until they destroyed someone’s grave and pulled up a smashed pelvis. It’s a shame that even today there’s an issue with consent. Things have gotten better, but I was never told what they did with the remains we worked with.
My family member is a physician.
He has told me about cadaver lab and the level of respect they gave each person. He said they even had a “gratitude ceremony” when done, because they saw it as such a gift.
As a Psychology major, yeah a lot of progress in science is unfortunately made in the blood of the vulnerable.
EDIT: I also wanted to comment on the persistence of medical racism in the US by saying this: I have a black mom and a white dad, my mom was super sick with the flu when I was born and as it evolved into pneumonia, her c-section wound ended up opening and becoming horribly infected. Her mother, my Nonna, brought her to the emergency room over and over, my mom says several days in a row, but they sent her home. It was our family doctor who offered to take a look at the wound and finally got my mom the wound care and antibiotics she needed. She really almost died, I almost did not have a mom or younger brother, because those emergency room doctors did not take a septic black woman seriously. I'm the same age now as my mom was when that happened, 26 years old. Don't even get me started on how a reservation dentist almost under-numbed my Alaskan Native partner when she was having her wisdom teeth out...
My brother just finished his second year of medical school and his school had interesting practices around cadaver lab. So for most of the course they just practiced on 3D scans of cadavers. Towards the end of the lab they got to work on actual cadavers, but first they had to meet with the families of the cadavers and listen to stories about the cadaver’s life.
My favorite TH-cam genre is big brain fem folks interviewing other big brain fem folks, so thank you for featuring this great guest!
33:54 I’m a mortician and my funeral home is responsible for the cremation of all the cadavers from the schools in my region. I’ll also add to this that we don’t know the identity for the entirety of the disposition process. Everything is completely anonymous and the individuals are only identified with letters and numbers. After cremation the remains are returned to the cadaver lab and they contact and mail them back to the families.
I was thinking of Good Omens, but i never thought it would be brought up 😂
ME TOO!!!
Same lmaoo, it's the reason I clicked on the video since I recognized the word resurrectionists and got curious
I would just like to voice my appreciation for your consideration of content warning. I believe only you and hannahthehorrible are the only TH-camrs I watch that actually care to include TWs. As a person with ptsd I cannot tell you enough how good it feels to have triggers taken seriously. We live in an unempathetic world where triggering people is a joke. Thank you for taking real trauma and people who live with it seriously.
My family couldn't give a rat's ass about me. You have convinced me to donate my body. This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I want to make a difference after I'm gone. Thank you.
You can also help a tree grow. 🌳 Even be turned into a 💎 diamond. I have donated some of my parts to help where able. The rest is for my son.
As a funeral director speaking, in order to donate your body to science there are pre requisites for what types of bodies are accepted. Anyone who is significantly overweight or obese, died via overdose of illegal drugs or alcohol, or from the effects of surgery and/or medications taken by the patient or given by medical staff during surgery, people with pre existing conditions like diabetes, etc etc etc., are all disqualified. The list goes on and on.
In order to donate your body to a body farm (legally licensed locations in which donated bodies are utilized in various positions and left in various types of inclement weather or conditions, ex., in the trunk of a car), in order to study and research how the human body decomposes in various situations and how long it may take and in what manner. This information is utilized by law enforcement, forensic investigators and other specialists in such fields in order to determine various forms of homicide, suicide and natural deaths, and the appearance of the bodies after various forms of such to aid in case investigation. However, there are waiting lists for such places, if you can believe it.
The last thing I will say that if you do decide to donate your body in either manner, you should consult with your doctor to see if you would be compatible for the first option, and then an attorney for the second. You really need legal specifications in your will in order to ensure you will actually GO to a body farm that may take you after your death. Telling your loved ones that this is what you want is not enough. You need legal documentation. I say this bc I have witnessed enough scenarios in which the deceased's wishes for burial or body disposal are completely ignored, despite their verbal wishes to the contrary, bc their family simply cannot face having their family member's body donated or "taken apart" for such purposes. Death is a funny thing for the living. Death of family or close friends/spouses or partners/children brings out sometimes odd and downright sinister and greedy behavior thst you might have thought you would never witness in your life. Just a word to the wise.
You can also volunteer for organ donation. It's genuinely a beautiful thing. In life, you can donate platelets and blood products to the red cross and you get to see what hospitals they go to.
I loved how Caitin Doughty handled elements of bodysnatching in a couple of her videos, including the one on exhumation. Your video's lent even more context to something I once only knew as a punchline/joke surrounding Burke and Hare.
I once (and only once thankfully) woke up mid procedure and it was one of the most terrifying things I've experienced, and that was for a non-surgical procedure. I can't imagine being awake for an actual surgery.
Wild that Galen's writings were able to gaslight people into not believing their own eyes for so long
I went to medical school 20 years ago, and in college pre med, and can attest that I saw the donor bodies treated with the extreme respect they deserved.
The rules were strict: bodies were to be covered respectfully except for the dissection area, only a few areas of a given cadaver were dissected, no appendage should be completely detached (leave a small line of tissue so arms don’t get moved and switched), no nicknames, etc.
It was not uncommon for med students to verbally thank the cadaver at the end of the class, and religious services were held specifically in remembrance of the anatomy body donors at the medical school, with many students attending.
I don't know if you will see this; but Kaz Rowe you are my favorite History channel here. You cover topics many ignore and I love seeing seeing a new video in my feed. Please never stop making these.
Loved your interview with the young doctor! I think she made a clear case for the necessity of real world, anatomy dissection studies (esp for future surgeons, I would think!), while still allowing for technology she didn't have them to possibly take its place. I don't believe it can anymore than the beautifully drawn medical books could take the place of a real cadaver for studying medicine. And as long as there is consent, AND the medical schools honor the wishes of the deceased as well as their families, this practice should continue to be a requirement. My mother was studying medicine in post-war Germany, and had dissected a human head. It was world-changing for her to have experienced it. Thank you for another of a great library of deeply researched and well presented, fascinating subjects!
as someone who is on med school myself (second year), we deal with Cadavers but they're mostly skinless here, and really not humanized bodies. The law here takes a few years to allow the school to start to dissect, the family has 2 years to claim the body back. But what actually made me fell sick was the formalin smell not the body.
Around here, there’s not a massive population, there’s a joke that you’re 2 degrees of separation from everyone. My uncle is the sultan of Bruneis dentist, for example. So all cadavers must not be identifiable, so that students won’t recognise someone they know
I was always curious about donating my body to science and the decision was solidified when I went to a human bodies exhibit. It was called "Anatomy of Happiness" and had human cadavers in action poses and then individual organs were displayed in a different room. I was so grateful to those bodies and to those people who donated their bodies and I was inspired! If my organs can't be harvested, then I want my body donated to science whether to an exhibit like that, or a cadaver lab, or a body farm(for studying decomposition) or something I haven't even encountered yet!
A friend I grew up with had to do cadaver lab for his major.
The teacher enforced a strict policy with the subject if you even made a joke about the situation you would fail the lab.
Loved this video kaz! It could be worth looking into the continued practice of body snatching though-it’s probably as much of an issue now as it was in europe 200 years ago. It’s just most snatching takes place in India and east Asia now. The bit you mentioned about black bodies being valued less, particularly in the face of desperation, is still quite apt. I believe many skeletons are sourced that way. There’s a video by medlife crisis that talks about it-he actually visits a facility in India that engages in some ressurectionist practices in “Can you legally buy a human skeleton?”
*edited because I forgot medlife crisis’s channel name
This actually played into some controversy around the Bodyworlds exhibit, where allegedly donated bodies were found to have gunshot wounds. Turns out they were the bodies of executed political prisoners from China! This profitable & popular European exhibition was using the bodies of unconsenting prisoners from other countries, and lying about their origin. I wrote about this for my dissertation (‘the use of human cadavers in performance and art’) and it was both horrifying and fascinating to learn about how little has changed when it comes to the rights of the dead
I think Kaz covered this in their ancient artifacts video, not entirely sure though
kaz uploading just in time for me to sit down a do my makeup ?? a god send
A God send indeed 🎉
kaz's historical outfits are already SO cool and christine's sewing projects manage to be even more sowoon worthy, friendship in style goals right there lol
loved this video's subject, i've been watching a medical show set in the 1800's (the artful dodger) so it's kinda been on my mind. and i liked seeing christine's pov, a few weeks ago i asked some similar questions to my sister who is having dissection lab in med school right now so it was fun to compare the answers, but her school somehow keeps its cadavers for +10 years 🤷🏻♀️
Thank you for making this video! This was a big hyperfixation for me a few years back and (in my opinion, at least) it is such an important piece of history that often goes untaught.
just for funsies when i was an undergrad (current mfa student) as an illustrator we had to take two courses of the same anatomy the med students took, cadaver lab and all. It was genuinely fascinating and we also had kids pass out. Its a whole wild experience like the discussion said because its so clear, yeah this was a person. especially one time we had a very young person and it was equal parts fascinating, because we had more tissue than in the usual old cadavers, and devastating because i couldnt uncouple it from the fact that this was a life ended far too soon. Loved anatomy though and also so grateful for the people who donated to the lab.
how many cadavers were worked on and how many patients died in the process of figuring out how to put hardware in a broken hip? i broke mine and had to get it pinned. i found a video of the general process they do and christ, they are ROUGH about it
And how many suffered from rejecting replacement parts. It’s sobering! Hope your hip is doing ok, it’s rough all up🤗
I had a hip replacement and watched a video of the surgery. If I had been squeamish I would have thrown up!
Do they use the medical grade reciprocating bone-saw? I got to observe a knee replacement in high school and 10 years later I can't get the smell of freshly sawn bone dust or the popping sound of the saw against the bone out of my head. Seeing them hammer and pin the replacement hardware is a whole different thing entirely. I've known a lot of people getting knee and hip replacements and I always beg them not to look at how the process works for their own sake.
I study medicine and in the city where I study there is a service to sign up to donate your body to science. They have so many people signed up that they currently do not take new applications. And having dissected bodys myself for my future job, I can say from experience how important it is still today. The remains of those people are put to rest after that and the students put together a memorial service where donors are honored for the human beings they once where and their families can attend to say goodbye once more. I am really grateful that so many people decide to donate what is left of them after they die to help a new generation of doctors gain knowledge and for scientists to gain new insights.
Excellent timing, just in time to keep me company while I ink my comic
@12:15 and probably a good portion of the time, the surgeon took a hit of ether himself to steady his nerves.
Also loved that you mentioned Henrietta Lacks. I’ve taught my students about her every year as an ES teacher.
This was a super interesting video as always!!! You may have heard of it while doing your resarch but there was a scandal in 2021 in Descartes University in Paris, which hold (held?) the bigest anatomic center in europe. They had a department for body donation, but it was found that the bodies where kept in awfull conditions. Bodies where getting eaten by mise and were stached in piles in the hallways. Some body parts were even being illegaly sold by students, they played with body parts...etc. A lot of things you talked about in your videos were still happening in Paris in 2021....this is truly disgusting :(
Kaz has perfect timing 💜
Another modern body scandal is about the "Bodies" exhibit that was going touring a few years back. Many of those bodies were not donated to the program. Some were intended for college programs, others have unknown origins.
In my degree (not medicine but medicine adjacent) we didn't have a cadaver lab but we did handle human remains in a more limited fashion. I can really attest to how shocking it is the first time it happens! Like you get presented with a spine and you start examining vertebrae and seeing how they all fit together assuming it's just a plaster model of the real thing to have your lecturer tell you this was a person...it's a memory that sticks with you.
as someone with severe necrophobia and seplophobia (fear of corpses/dead things and fear of rot and decay) this was def a Hard Watch and a hard subject for me, but vintage medicine and especially victorian medicine is so beyond fascinating to me (along with, like, the entirety of the victorian and edwardian eras) that i HAD to watch. Kaz NEVER misses, i always learn so much from them and i hope they keep posting until the sun dies its inevitable heat death
I'm imagining Med students hailing a cab and then doing the 1800s version of a weekend at Bernie's with the body they just dug up.
I appreciate your efficient cadence. I usually have to listen on 1.5x or even 1.75x with other channels, but I prefer to go down to 1.25x for you!
In summer 2022, my dad and I took a two week trip to the UK and while we were in Edinburgh (we stayed at the Code pod next to St. Giles), we did a true crime tour that talked a lot about Burke and Hare!
I'm typing this comment before watching the video yet so Kaz might've mentioned stuff that I'm talking about here.
We went to that cemetery showed in the beginning of the video. Our tour guide, Adam, told us a lot of them and the history behind graverobbing in Edinburgh. While we were there, the National Museum of Scotland had an Anatomy exhibit open for a brief time and Burke's real skeleton was on display! It's still pretty intact. We weren't allowed to take pictures but you can look it up, if you're interested!
Perfect serendipitous timing - just rewatched all of "Good Omens". They have a bit about resurrectionists in season 2.
I'm a current medical student and had clinical anatomy last year! my experience was very similar to Christine's in the lab. I kept thinking during the class how much it would suck having to dissect a body before the current preservation methods. We got to take our sweet time (to an extent, med school is still intense lol) over the course of eight months learning the anatomy, but if you had a fresh body from a grave in the 1800s, you would have to move faster than decomposition. It was a gift to have the opportunity to dissect a human donor. (I never want to do it again though haha)
Thank you so-o much foe the interview with Christine. I was just getting ready to comment about this. I first learned of such a program here with my state's university medical school when my father told us that he had filed the necessary paperwork to do this and upon his death we were to notify this appropriate agency. with mixed feelings I mentioned this to my Doctor. Like Christine she almost teared up relating to me how much that body had meant to her. We had an excellent (we assume, anyway) experience. We had a memorial service for him at the time. The University notified us maybe 18 months later when his cremains were ready and we then had an interment service for our family at the cemetery (He & my mother were buried at a National Cemetery since he was a Veteran.) Later that year the Medical School sent us a 'Thank you' letter with an invitation to the annual memorial service they have for all the past year's donors & the interment in a small cemetery on the Med School grounds for those remains that were not claimed. I have since filed the paperwork to be a donor. Thank you and thank you to Christine.
took gross anatomy (med school dropout due to autoimmune illness) and also worked in morgue for 2.5 yrs. Let me say, I really think that cadaver studies is quite necessary due to not learning about anatomy per se, but a physician learns a lot about themselves learning about death. My hypothesis is there is an instinct (the syncope many experience as did your doc friend) upon the experience of opening a body that we animals/humans have instincts for. MHO is that physicians/any clinician really working with humans needs to know the worst, to understand the how and why and test themselves. We humans get techtchy when that instinct is triggered and you don't know till you're tested. It's my working hypothesis (from many observations and having some kick ass attendings in my lifetime) that this may be why a lot of PTSD esp that triggered by violence (ie that viscera along with that human trauma death reaction in general in which we humans don't do so well at dealing with in any level of society). Even noted that this PTSD is/can be passed down (see studies on survivor's children of genocides, even though those children born well away from violence in say the US or Canada). Just some thoughts from a chica who understands death a little too well (also was educator for A&P at undergrad level till this last fall)
omg!! sewstine!! i didnt expect to see her! what a great collab moment
You are so dripped out in all of your videos and all your guests are always dripped out 😭
gonna be honest i immediately clicked on this video bc of good omens and the fact that you included it made me jump for JOY!2!!3!2!2
We all shared one cadaver during anatomy and physiology classes in college in the 90’s. Small private college in the Midwest. I don’t know what happened to the body after. 30 years later, I fell like we missed an opportunity to talk about consent, death, dying, and laws over what happens to the body after you die. I know so much more now. The world is changing, but it’s so much slower than it should be some times.
This has been a very informative video. Especially on a topic that isn't often discussed.
the ad read vest is iconic, Kaz looks amazing as usual (I'm obsessed with their outfits for each episode!!)
I recently wrote an essay on resurrectionists so this is perfect timing!
I got into your videos probably about 2-3 weeks ago and i just ADORE the formula you have for these videos. your content does such a good job of educating and your outfits are so so so so incredible ily
ty for still masking in public...its so depressing seeing most people treat covid as a thing of the past despite the thousands people still dying/being disabled by it daily.
it is actually amazing that we've gone from the resurrection men to some medical schools now using silicone simulated cadavers
I can’t believe I’m actually gonna learn about the guys I’ve only ever heard about through good omens and horrible histories
I AM SO HAPPY THIS IS OUT. THIS IS SUCH AN IMPORTANT TOPIC TO ME. OH MY GODS.
My grandfather was a physics professor and was always very open about the fact that when he died he wanted his body to be used in schools for research and study. It was a source of pride for him that he would get to continue contributing to expanding knowledge in the world even after his death. Its a perspective that always sat really well with me, and im only 26 now so hopefully my death is a long way off but my loved ones know i am an organ doner, and want my body donated to science if at all possible.
I know i could never do the medical work. I am far too squeamish. But it makes me happy to think i can still help future doctors.
Your narrative skills are insane I always feel like I’m in a candlelit cabin while a magical books pages flip before me and you’re the omniscient narrator
Sewstine crossover! The disgusting history is so important to cover, and you did it well, but what a delight to have a palate cleansing moment of joy towards the end when Christine was talking about how meaningful the cadaver she worked with was to her education.
im a simple person, i see new kaz video, i click
Same!
Another really cool part of edinburgh is the vaults! I went on a tour of them last June and there was a whole section of it that looked like a bunch of really deep, open pizza ovens all beside and on top of eachother. The speculation and most popular theory is that they were used by resurrectionists to store bodies, and it’s supported by some people discovering what they think is a tunnel from the vaults to one of the medical schools/surgical theatres (don’t remember which it was) in Edinburgh. I did the tour on a whim and I am SO happy I did! Best part of the trip by far, learned so much about Edinburgh and Old Edinburgh
This ended up being an episode I hadn’t expected when you interviewed Christine, which I thought was so touching and moving. The way she described what it was like emotionally for her to experience cadaver lab. It really made me emotional as well! Thank you for including her in this episode.
this whole video feels like a reference to that one good omens minisode to my obsessed fangirl brain, especially whenever scotland is mentioned 😭
16:00 OH MY GOD THEY ACTUALLY MENTIONED GOOD OMENS OH MY GOD
I kid you not I randomly decided too finish good omens 2 and seeing my fav TH-camr talk about the history that interested me the most in the series made my month❤️❤️
Just when I thought this channel couldn’t be more perfectly catered to my interests! I actually wrote my dissertation about the use of human cadavers in performance and art, so I wound up doing a lot of research into the immoral practices that artists and medical professionals have used to get access to corpses throughout history. I also wrote (and later directed) an absurdist comedy play about grave robbers, called The Resurrection Men. Safe to say I thoroughly enjoyed this video!
As always, an insightful and delightful watch 🖤
I also love that you interviewed someone with expertise in this area! It really added to the video, it would be awesome to see more of that kind of thing in the future (Caitlin Doughty AKA Ask A Mortician immediately sprung to mind as someone I’d love to see you interview, given your shared passion for weird and morbid history)
Your channel is one of the most special channels on TH-cam. I've learned so much from you, Kaz. Keep doing this amazing and important work
It’s touching to know the gratitude the students carry for the people who have donated their bodies today, you can only hope that they carry that love and gratitude to their living patients. I believe my aunt decided to have her remains donated to a medical school when she passes, most likely the very University I go to (not a medical student, we have the largest cadaver lab in my state). I feel reassured knowing she will be in good hands.
Those paintings of them guys studying the corpses look like some hardcore album art
How we treat the body and human remains is so nuanced. Not knowing dark medical history is such a bad thing. You gotta know what mistakes were made to learn from them.
The source of cadavers for medical school is much better, but not perfect. But , a new problem has arisen: the abuse of corpses donated to science. Not just universities lying about what they do with the bodies after the classes are done, like you talked about. There have been a couple cases of people selling the corpses or body parts of donated remains. Caitlin Douty (Ask A Mortician) covered this topic recently due to it happening at Harvard Medical School. Highly recommend her videos if you like this topic.
I love your stuff lady.
The mention of the complainers checking below for a link.
Made me crack up as it seems a human problem.
I love your friends that have cool cameos and this one’s no exception. Be cool just to hang with a group of you all and stay quiet and listen.
Your awesome.
I find these morbid topics of Victorian times to be soooo interesting, it’s crazy how the time period you live in can so heavily affect your perception of death in general
I used to be a tour guide in Edinburgh back in 2008-09, so knew quite a few stories and names I'd told to countless tourists would be coming up in the videos you'd make from this location. Maggie Dickson's story was, if you can believe it, the one I'd do just before the lunch break.
the head of the county historical society is writing a book just about this. However, if a newly buried body was disturbed, often the town would head to the nearest college that trained physicians. Some local graves have the story of how the body was returned after residents demanded a body back. It was especially sad if a child was taken. Indeed today, child cadavers are needed for anatomical study. Every New England town has stories of missing bodies, and anger about medical students. One school would hang the bodes on hooks far up in a high ceiling, where those that were looking for bodies never looked. A student often had to supply his own cadaver, and they were very expensive. Or you could just dig one up!
My favourite video essayist making a video about something I was just obsessed with??? I’m so excited to watch this
I'm one of those people who has a vein where it shouldn't be; it's wrapped around my esophagus. The doctor who discovered it was really excited, he exclaimed "This is something we only see on the boards!" So glad to make his day.
I thought this was an old one! But im happy to see a new upload!
oh the bus home after I blew a flat tyre, this will help keep me sane :3 what great timing!
"My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space?!"
"Future events like these will affect all of us...in the Future."
"Can you prove that it didn't happen?"
@@nadapuesnada7716 "You see, you see? Your stupid minds! Stupid, stupid, stupid!"
16:00 OMG A GOOD OMENS REF. my day is officially made. i was gonna quote crowley in the comment section
I loved the interview portions of this. It really added some great context