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The Origin and Nature of Pathology
Published in Jeremy R. Jass, Understanding Pathology, 2020
Another factor which encouraged the development of pathology was the growth of an intellectual movement occurring throughout Europe founded on an ‘enlightenment’ that encompassed rationalism and anticlericalism. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the English legal theorist and reformer and originator of the influential doctrine of utilitarianism, had the final word on the utility of the body as vehicle for teaching. He requested in his will that his skeletal remains be dressed and displayed in the university that he co-founded, University College, London. He made a more practical contribution, however, in the form of the Anatomy Act (1832), passed in the year of his death. Prior to this, the growth of private institutions for the teaching of medicine had resulted in a huge demand for cadavers which could not be met by the relatively small number of executed criminals. The shortfall was made good by the ‘resurrectionists’ or grave-robbers. The entire enterprise led to riots and the destruction of dissecting rooms by angry mobs (French, 1993). Bentham was opposed to capital punishment, but also perceived the importance of anatomical dissection. The Anatomy Act allowed bodies other than those of executed criminals to be dissected. This included body donation prior to death, which Bentham encouraged through his personal brand of body disposal. In practice the new generation of cadavers consisted of the unclaimed bodies of paupers, and dissection thus became a ‘punishment’ of the poor as well as the wicked.
Traumatic, Crush and Compression Asphyxia Including ‘Burking’
Published in Burkhard Madea, Asphyxiation, Suffocation,and Neck Pressure Deaths, 2020
‘Burking’ is an example of homicide where two forms of asphyxia are combined into a single act, usually smothering and traumatic/compression asphyxia. In legal terms, it means to murder an individual, usually by smothering, for the purpose of selling the corpse. It takes its name from William Burke, a 19th-century murderer who, with his accomplice William Hare, killed 16 people between 1827 and 1828 for the purpose of selling their bodies to Dr Robert Knox, a private anatomy lecturer, for use at the medical schools of Edinburgh [1,16,70]. Burke was hanged on 28 January 1829, and ironically subjected to partial dissection the next day as part of an anatomy lecture. His body was then quartered and preserved for anatomical display. As a consequence of their acts, the Anatomy Act was passed in 1832, which made body donation for the purpose of anatomical dissection possible.
‘Out, damned spot!’
Published in Alan Bleakley, Educating Doctors’ Senses Through the Medical Humanities, 2020
In the UK at the time of writing, 17 out of 37 medical schools offer full dissection (MSAG 2018). Further – a sensitive ethical issue – the sourcing of cadavers globally remains problematic and exhaustive data are not available. In 2012, The International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA) recommended that only donated bodies should be used for anatomy teaching and research. Habicht and colleagues (Habicht et al. 2018: 1293) obtained information from 71 of 165 countries with medical schools. A summary of their findings paints an unsettling picture: In 22 (32%) of the 68 countries that use cadavers for anatomy teaching, body donation is the exclusive source of bodies. However, in most other countries, unclaimed bodies remain the main (n = 18; 26%) or exclusive (n = 21; 31%) source. Some countries import cadavers from abroad, mainly from the United States or India. In one country, bodies of executed persons are given to anatomy departments.
Resuming cadaver dissection during a pandemic
Published in Medical Education Online, 2021
As the pandemic continues, only some UK universities have restarted their body donation programmes, potentially due to the uncertainty surrounding the potential of renewed lockdowns or due to concerns around the ability to guarantee that donor bodies are negative for Covid-19. This causes an ongoing issue, as for those institutions who usually accept large numbers of donors, the longer body donation programmes remain closed, the longer it will take to recover. This therefore creates potential for Covid-19 to affect not only this academic year, but also cause significant problems for subsequent years. Nevertheless, this does not mean that dissection has or will be cancelled completely as Ooi and Ooi allude to [1]. The authors do however make very valid points about the benefits of dissection and the advantages it affords to students, which we unreservedly agree with. Students gain not only anatomical knowledge, but also life lessons in ethics and humanity [2,5]. In light of this, despite the pandemic having and continuing to cause problems with the delivery of medical education, institutions and educators are continuing to seek ways to ensure pedagogies such as dissection are integrated into the modified curriculum.
‘To donate or not to donate? that is the question!’: an organ and body donation comic
Published in Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine, 2020
Jessica Irwin, Mark Roughley, Kathryn Smith
Although, this study was conducted over 20 years ago and attitudes may have changed, it highlights the importance of informing the public of the potential benefits of body donation for teaching and research. It is important to note however that Richardson and Hurwitz’s survey was conducted before the of the organ retention scandal at Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool in the 1990s (Tomasini, 2017), which led to the consolidation of the Human Tissue Act (1961), the Anatomy Act (1984) and the Human Organ Transplants Act (1989), as the Human Tissue Act (2004). While there are no known published studies that demonstrate a link to a decline in body donation after the Alder Hey scandal explicitly, donation rates are dependent on public opinions, which may be influenced by external events (Asher et al., 2005). The widespread media coverage of the Alder Hey scandal may have led to an increased distrust and hesitancy in seeking out donation programmes and contributed to the circulation of myths and rumour about body donation.
Round window and promontory movements during bone conduction with different middle ear conditions in Thiel embalmed specimens
Published in Acta Oto-Laryngologica, 2019
Christof Stieger, Martin Kompis, Marco Caversaccio, Jérémie Guignard, Andreas Arnold
Experiments were performed on seven ears of four anatomical human whole head preparations embalmed according to Thiel [6]. All donors consented to the post-mortem use of their body for science according to the terms of the human body donation program of the Institute of Anatomy, University of Bern, Switzerland. The use of Thiel heads was approved by the local ethics committee (KEK-BE 030/08; BASEC PB_2018-00113). The same specimens were used and the preparation technique, as well as the experimental setup and data analysis, were similar to that described in our previous publication [7].