What is a cadaver?
Meera Mahesh
We know a lot about the human body now – all the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones that make us what we are. It wasn’t always like this though. People had to learn what was inside the human body, and there was only one good way of doing this in the past: to cut a body up and see what was inside!
What are cadavers?
Have you ever heard of the Egyptian Mummies? A mummy is a body that has been preserved after the person has died. The way the ancient Egyptians used to do this was by removing the person’s organs, drying the body out, and wrapping the body in linen. The whole process took 70 days! It’s because of this process that archaeologists can look at these Mummies and discover what life was like in ancient Egypt 4000 years ago. Mummifying a body was very expensive, and it was mainly Pharaohs and noble officials, as well as a few rich ‘common’ people who underwent this process.
Cadavers are like Mummies. After a person has died, their body is prepared in a certain way (this is called embalming), which stops the body from decomposing and breaking down.
How do we use cadavers currently?
Lots of different people use cadavers: artists use them to learn how to draw certain body parts, medical students use them to learn about the anatomy of the body, surgeons use them to develop new life-saving procedures, pharmaceutical companies test medicines on them, and before the invention of crash test dummies, cadavers were even used to test the safety of motor vehicles.
Cadavers in History
Since 300 BC, the ancient Greeks started teaching anatomy by dissecting (scientifically cutting) cadavers. Since medical students go on to become doctors, where they do procedures, such as taking blood, they must have a good idea of what the body looks like below the skin, and so cadaveric dissection is still a rite of passage for most medical students worldwide, teaching the depth and anatomy of the different tissues in the body.
We’ve talked about what a cadaver is, and the kinds of people that use them to learn about the body. We still must cover one very important question…
Where do cadavers come from?
There is now an official pathway for those wanting to donate their bodies to science, which ensures the person is aware of what will happen after they die, and what their body will be used for, for instance, teaching medical students. Using cadavers wasn’t always legal, however. Parliament passed the Murder Act in 1752, which allowed the bodies of murderers to be donated for science, which allowed some surgeons and their students to study the body. However, as science, surgery and medicine became more popular in the 18th century, there became a shortage of cadavers, which lead to scientists having to either dig up recently buried bodies from the graveyard, which became known as body-snatching or grave robbing, or pay men called ‘resurrection men’ to raid graves for them. There were gangs filled with resurrection men who made their wage from digging graves, with one duo (called Burke and Hare) going as far as murdering people to sell their bodies to the scientists in 1828. The murders shocked the public and caused Parliament to introduce many laws, starting with the 1832 Anatomy Act, which included the start of what we now know as body donation.
While the use of cadavers in education is varied and continues even now, some parts of the history of cadaver use have been quite dark. Due to the various laws, and the change in mindset, there has been a lot of progress in the last 300 years: to learn from a cadaver is a privilege, and there is a lot of respect and gratitude for the individuals who have donated their bodies to teach others.