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I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    atlasobscura:

    All the secrets of human consciousness may be embedded somewhere in the squishy brains nestled in our skulls. This drive to find out what’s hidden in our mental anatomy has resulted in medical specimen collections of brains all over the world. The Wilder Brain Collection in Ithaca, New York, has around 70 brains; the Cushing Brain Collection in New Haven, Connecticut, has around 550. But this is nothing compared to the around 3,300 brains kept at the Brain Museum in Lima.

    Curious Fact of the Week: Biggest Brain Collections

    atlasobscura: For numerous travelers, Naples is the darkest gem of the Old Continent, concealing in its streets countless artifacts of a macabre nature. With skulls, bones, petrified saints, and holy blood, the iconography of death seems to have spread everywhere. Moreover, Naples is paved with obscure legends. Behind every door, under each alcove, vivid tales linger on, tangling together the Italian aristocracy, exalted quests for knowledge, and, of course, cold blooded murders. Included in these is the story of the Anatomical Machines. Located in the basement of the Sansevero Chapel in the historic district of Naples, the bodies of two people, a man and a woman, stand in an elaborate display. Their skin and their muscles are gone, leaving them open and naked. Yet they proudly present their vascular systems, their skeletons, and some of them inner organs. It’s evident that our couple is not an object of devotion, so their dramatic internal nudity in one of the most sumptuous chapels in town is paradoxical. Who are these two people and why is their anatomy displayed in this sacred place? For that answer and more… Morbid Monday: The Macabre Myth of Naples’ Anatomical Machines

    atlasobscura:

    For numerous travelers, Naples is the darkest gem of the Old Continent, concealing in its streets countless artifacts of a macabre nature. With skulls, bones, petrified saints, and holy blood, the iconography of death seems to have spread everywhere. Moreover, Naples is paved with obscure legends. Behind every door, under each alcove, vivid tales linger on, tangling together the Italian aristocracy, exalted quests for knowledge, and, of course, cold blooded murders. Included in these is the story of the Anatomical Machines.

    Located in the basement of the Sansevero Chapel in the historic district of Naples, the bodies of two people, a man and a woman, stand in an elaborate display. Their skin and their muscles are gone, leaving them open and naked. Yet they proudly present their vascular systems, their skeletons, and some of them inner organs.

    It’s evident that our couple is not an object of devotion, so their dramatic internal nudity in one of the most sumptuous chapels in town is paradoxical. Who are these two people and why is their anatomy displayed in this sacred place?

    For that answer and more… Morbid Monday: The Macabre Myth of Naples’ Anatomical Machines

    • Posted 2 days ago
    • May 21st, 2013

    313 Likes & Reblogs

    ‘Body Worlds: Pulse’ at Discovery Times Square A man and woman, stripped of skin, are balanced in a balletic embrace, but their skulls and thoracic and abdominal cavities are open from behind and their spines are pulled backward, with organs and muscles attached. A woman stands erect, also skinless, a slightly melancholy expression emerging from her facial musculature, her belly sliced vertically so we can see her liver and intestines, along with a 5-month-old fetus in her womb. Another flayed body welcomes us into this new exhibition, “Body Worlds: Pulse” at Discovery Times Square, holding aloft, with pride, the complete coat of skin that has been removed from his body. These are not models (or allusions to “The Silence of the Lambs”) but actual people who, since 1983, have donated their bodies for such preservation and display. More than 13,200 of the living made such promises; 1,254 of them are deceased, and some of them (with organs from other sources) appear among the 200 specimens displayed here. You might assume that sliced and pulled-apart human cadavers, preserved in all the freshness of death by infusions of plastics and resin, no longer have the power to shock or amaze. After all, since the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens invented the process he calls plastination in 1977, then started the donation program with his Institute of Plastination, and finally began mounting specimens in “Body Worlds” exhibitions in 1995, some 36 million people have seen the shows in nearly two dozen countries in 11 different incarnations. (This one, “Pulse,” was designed for New York.) A competitor arose, Premier Exhibitions, and opened a series of successful exhibitions in the United States (including one that has been closed at the South Street Seaport since Hurricane Sandy. (Source: The New York TImes)

    ‘Body Worlds: Pulse’ at Discovery Times Square

    A man and woman, stripped of skin, are balanced in a balletic embrace, but their skulls and thoracic and abdominal cavities are open from behind and their spines are pulled backward, with organs and muscles attached.

    A woman stands erect, also skinless, a slightly melancholy expression emerging from her facial musculature, her belly sliced vertically so we can see her liver and intestines, along with a 5-month-old fetus in her womb.

    Another flayed body welcomes us into this new exhibition, “Body Worlds: Pulse” at Discovery Times Square, holding aloft, with pride, the complete coat of skin that has been removed from his body.

    These are not models (or allusions to “The Silence of the Lambs”) but actual people who, since 1983, have donated their bodies for such preservation and display. More than 13,200 of the living made such promises; 1,254 of them are deceased, and some of them (with organs from other sources) appear among the 200 specimens displayed here.

    You might assume that sliced and pulled-apart human cadavers, preserved in all the freshness of death by infusions of plastics and resin, no longer have the power to shock or amaze. After all, since the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens invented the process he calls plastination in 1977, then started the donation program with his Institute of Plastination, and finally began mounting specimens in “Body Worlds” exhibitions in 1995, some 36 million people have seen the shows in nearly two dozen countries in 11 different incarnations. (This one, “Pulse,” was designed for New York.) A competitor arose, Premier Exhibitions, and opened a series of successful exhibitions in the United States (including one that has been closed at the South Street Seaport since Hurricane Sandy.

    (Source: The New York TImes)

    ‘Come for the skin book, stay for the history!’ An interview with Dr Lindsey Fitzharris

    The image of the 18th-century anatomist is a shady one, redolent of midnight forays into graveyards and dissection in front of a rabble of students. The cadavers in these scenes are anonymous and devoid of character; mere objects fuelling a relentless craving for knowledge.

    But everybody who ended up on the anatomist’s table was once a person meeting the everyday worries and joys of life. Dr Lindsey Fitzharris, writer of The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice blog, is exploring the reality behind the people whose bodies helped advance the science of surgery. She is crowdfunding her TV documentary, Medicine’s Dark Secrets – and what a fascinating programme it promises to be! I asked Lindsey to tell me more about herself and her project.

    Scans that prove Leonardo da Vinci was right all along: New show reveals ‘startling accuracy’ of anatomical sketches which lay undiscovered for hundreds of years The startling accuracy of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings will be highlighted by a new exhibition that compares the artist’s work with modern medical scans. Long praised as one of the finest artists of the Renaissance era and a visionary inventor, da Vinci’s work as an anatomist was also well ahead of its time. The forthcoming show will pitch his studies of the human body against today’s high tech medical imaging technologies to show just how groundbreaking his investigations of the human body were. Thirty sheets of the artist’s work kept by the Royal Collection Trust are set for display at the Edinburgh International Festival in August to show just how far-sighted da Vinci’s work was. Da Vinci first began researching the human body to help him keep his paintings as ‘true to nature’ as possible, but the project soon took on a life of its own and he had ambitions to write an illustrated treatise on anatomy. Read more.

    Scans that prove Leonardo da Vinci was right all along: New show reveals ‘startling accuracy’ of anatomical sketches which lay undiscovered for hundreds of years

    The startling accuracy of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings will be highlighted by a new exhibition that compares the artist’s work with modern medical scans.

    Long praised as one of the finest artists of the Renaissance era and a visionary inventor, da Vinci’s work as an anatomist was also well ahead of its time.

    The forthcoming show will pitch his studies of the human body against today’s high tech medical imaging technologies to show just how groundbreaking his investigations of the human body were.

    Thirty sheets of the artist’s work kept by the Royal Collection Trust are set for display at the Edinburgh International Festival in August to show just how far-sighted da Vinci’s work was.

    Da Vinci first began researching the human body to help him keep his paintings as ‘true to nature’ as possible, but the project soon took on a life of its own and he had ambitions to write an illustrated treatise on anatomy.

    Read more.

    theoddmentemporium:

    The Burns Archive is a collection of over 700,000 vintage photographs noted for iconic, historical images, including medical photography, anatomical oddities, post-mortem photography and graphic detail of the darker side of life—death, disease, disaster, crime, racism, revolution, riots, and war. The Burns Archive also publishes the Sleeping Beauty series of books about memorial photography with post-mortem photographs.

    The Burns Archive is made up of copy prints from the Burns Collection, the body of work of Dr. Stanley B. Burns, M.D., an ophthalmologist and its creator, curator, and proprietor. The collection is purportedly the nation’s largest of early medical photography and the most important private historic nineteenth century documentary photography collection in the world and is a unique source of historic visual documentation. This is a unique source generally available as stock photography.

    The Burns Archive Official Website and Blog (more photos are available at the blog).

    (via ladykrampus)

    MORBID MONDAY : CORPSE TRAFFIC AND CEMETERY GUNS IN THE GOLDEN ERA OF BODY SNATCHING When the Ripper strikes, your life comes to an end. But in the 18th century, a peaceful rest was unsure, as the cemeteries could be surprisingly lively. At the time, medicine’s growing involvement in dissection was considered sacrilegious, but it was the most direct way to decipher the mechanics of the human body. For anatomy to become a legitimate science, it was beget with the most macabre repercussions: body snatching. In the United States, the demand for cadavers peaked around the 1760s as medical schools opened around the new country. Physicians circumvented the religious issue with necropsies using the cold remains of condemned men, suicide victims, and members of the community whose bodies were considered “desecration-friendly,” but soon, the great Moloch of Science became difficult to satisfy as the number of physician students grew considerably. Anatomists, whose main concern was to advance medical knowledge, had to set aside their ethical onus and ask low-life fiends to find them dead bodies. The grave robbing craze started as a sort of mafia nocturna — sneaking in cemeteries at the witching hour, shovel in hand, and the promise of good cash to “resurrect” the deceased and sell them at top dollar to medical institutions. As God’s Acres resembled more and more molehills as fresh tombs were systematically disinterred and emptied of their human content, the jaded cemetery keepers invented an array of devices and architectural designs to protect the necropolis from the “resurrectionists” plague. Watch towers, Mortsafe cages, and other afterlife paddocks were installed, many of which are still in place in our cemeteries. But one of the most incredible of these anti-grave robber contraptions is in the Museum of Mourning Art, in Arlington, Pennsylvania, under the colloquial name of “Cemetery Gun.” Read more here.

    MORBID MONDAY : CORPSE TRAFFIC AND CEMETERY GUNS IN THE GOLDEN ERA OF BODY SNATCHING

    When the Ripper strikes, your life comes to an end. But in the 18th century, a peaceful rest was unsure, as the cemeteries could be surprisingly lively.

    At the time, medicine’s growing involvement in dissection was considered sacrilegious, but it was the most direct way to decipher the mechanics of the human body. For anatomy to become a legitimate science, it was beget with the most macabre repercussions: body snatching.

    In the United States, the demand for cadavers peaked around the 1760s as medical schools opened around the new country. Physicians circumvented the religious issue with necropsies using the cold remains of condemned men, suicide victims, and members of the community whose bodies were considered “desecration-friendly,” but soon, the great Moloch of Science became difficult to satisfy as the number of physician students grew considerably. Anatomists, whose main concern was to advance medical knowledge, had to set aside their ethical onus and ask low-life fiends to find them dead bodies.

    The grave robbing craze started as a sort of mafia nocturna — sneaking in cemeteries at the witching hour, shovel in hand, and the promise of good cash to “resurrect” the deceased and sell them at top dollar to medical institutions. As God’s Acres resembled more and more molehills as fresh tombs were systematically disinterred and emptied of their human content, the jaded cemetery keepers invented an array of devices and architectural designs to protect the necropolis from the “resurrectionists” plague. Watch towers, Mortsafe cages, and other afterlife paddocks were installed, many of which are still in place in our cemeteries. But one of the most incredible of these anti-grave robber contraptions is in the Museum of Mourning Art, in Arlington, Pennsylvania, under the colloquial name of “Cemetery Gun.”

    Read more here.

    Invasion of the ‘Deathxperts’: Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris/The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice Edition I like to think that I’m the first to notice, love, and highlight a fantastic new phenomenon that’s out there: beautiful, young and brilliant women who specialize and punditize on all things morbid. Have you noticed this yet? No? Do pay attention: It was my experience with the great Caitlin Doughty, whom I featured in this space a while back, that turned me on to the fabulosity that exists out there. People like Bess Lovejoy, Brandy Schillaceand Gemma Angel each deserve their own feature and will likely get one from me at some point. Today, however, I’d like to introduce you to one in particular who stands out for a number of reasons, including an intriguing new crowd funding appeal for a feature-length documentary project that’s just launched via Indiegogo.  She is Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris. Better known on the Internets as The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice. Fitzharris received a Ph.D. in the History of Science, Medicine & Technology from the University of Oxford in 2009. She is currently a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the creator and author of the popular website, The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice, which looks at the horrors of pre-anesthetic surgery, and has written for New Scientist, The Lancet, History Today and the Guardian. She has appeared on television for the BBC and National Geographic. Here is her deal… A bit more on Lindsey Fitzharris and the funding campaign for Medicine’s Dark Secrets - you can read the rest of the piece here! All hail the rise of the Deathxperts!

    Invasion of the ‘Deathxperts’: Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris/The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice Edition

    I like to think that I’m the first to notice, love, and highlight a fantastic new phenomenon that’s out there: beautiful, young and brilliant women who specialize and punditize on all things morbid. Have you noticed this yet? No? Do pay attention:

    It was my experience with the great Caitlin Doughty, whom I featured in this space a while back, that turned me on to the fabulosity that exists out there. People like Bess Lovejoy, Brandy Schillaceand Gemma Angel each deserve their own feature and will likely get one from me at some point. Today, however, I’d like to introduce you to one in particular who stands out for a number of reasons, including an intriguing new crowd funding appeal for a feature-length documentary project that’s just launched via Indiegogo. 

    She is Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris. Better known on the Internets as The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice.

    Fitzharris received a Ph.D. in the History of Science, Medicine & Technology from the University of Oxford in 2009. She is currently a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the creator and author of the popular website, The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice, which looks at the horrors of pre-anesthetic surgery, and has written for New Scientist, The Lancet, History Today and the Guardian. She has appeared on television for the BBC and National Geographic. Here is her deal…

    A bit more on Lindsey Fitzharris and the funding campaign for Medicine’s Dark Secrets - you can read the rest of the piece here! All hail the rise of the Deathxperts!

    Medicine’s Dark Secrets

    Stories from the birth of Modern Surgery: The Doctors, Their Victims and The Collections…

    THE SUMMARY:

    The advancement of modern surgery came with a price. Victims of the anatomists were often anonymous bits of flesh, yielding under surgeons’ knives. With “Medicine’s Dark Secrets”, they will be anonymous no more.

    We have access to restricted medical and forensic collections, filled with jars of body parts that have been sliced, diced and catalogued for scientific research. But, what about the people who make up these collections? Who are these specimens?

    We think it is important to tell the stories of these people who died, as well as the surgeons who cut open their bodies, so that these collections do not remain concealed, misinterpreted and misunderstood.

    In this feature length documentary, we’ll follow a body from the moment of death, to its delivery onto the surgeon’s table, continue through the process of anatomization and what happened after; concluding with a selection of body parts in medical collections that no member of the public has seen – until now. 

    In “Medicine’s Dark Secrets”, we’ll explore the reasons why this body - and others like it - were anatomized and put on display. With help from our interviewees, we’ll investigate what happened to different body parts, how they became taboo and why they were later hidden in museum archives.

    From criminals to corpses and from ‘sack ‘em up men’ to skin books, we examine the stories of the people who died – knowingly or not – in an effort to advance medical science in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

    We are aiming to make “Medicine’s Dark Secrets” a stunning, cinematic journey into the past. We hope that you’ll go on that journey with us. You will meet some amazing people, hear some fascinating stories and see some extraordinary objects and specimens along the way and we’ll come out the other side having learned about this pivotal time in medical history.

    Your feedback is important to us. We’d like to hear from you. What stories would you like to see on “Medicine’s Dark Secrets”? The Casebooks of The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice are open to us, so have a look and let us know what fascinates and repels you. 

    I’ve posted about Lindsey Fitzharris before because she is an all-round awesome lady and is responsible for one of my favourite blogs - The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice. This project will be AMAZING but she is going to need your help to bring it to life! Lindsey is looking to raise $30,000 (£20,000) to make this documentary and every donation counts! Not only will you be part of something marvellously morbid, but you can also score yourself some fabulous ‘perks’ - from t-shirts to DVDs! Check out the details here and if you can spare a few dollars and/or spread the word about the funding campaign, then it would be greatly appreciated!

    Gloucester prison closure: Criminals buried underneath

    A historian has said there could be up to 122 executed criminals buried in unmarked graves under Gloucester prison.

    The jail will close at the end of March and proposals for its future already include a hotel, flats and a museum.

    But English Heritage said the site required archaeological investigation before any development takes place.

    The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said it was aware of 17 burials there between 1874 and 1939.

    A MoJ spokesman said it was considering the future of these along with the future use of the site.

    The prison, a Grade II*-listed building, was built over the levelled remains of Gloucester Castle.

    Local historian Phil Moss said public executions took place at the gate lodge up until the middle of the 19th Century.

    “Tradition was prisoners were always buried within the prison,” he said.

    Mr Moss added that there could also be Roman remains beneath the jail.

    He said limestone set into the walls of the prison was believed to have come from “a Roman quay or something like that”.

    But he added not all the bodies will have been buried there.

    “According to the records when they were cut down from the gallows sometimes… the body was taken to Gloucester Infirmary and used for anatomical dissection,” he added.

    Read more here.

    moshita:

    MRI Music Video

    Sivu - Better Man Than He

    Artists use real-time MRI footage to create music video

    Musician Sivu lies in an MRI scanner, repeatedly singing his new song “Better Man Than He,” for almost three hours to make the three-minute video.

    Some see, not to mention make, art in unusual places. And so it is with U.K.-based musicianSivu, who is letting viewers peer inside his mind while he sings — literally.

    Reportedly inspired by the work being done on children born with cleft lips and palates at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, Sivu lay in an MRI scanner for almost three hours and sang his new single, “Better Man Than He,” repeatedly. The resulting music video is an edit of that footage, relying on nothing but the relatively new real-time medical imaging technique often used to capture the subtle movements of organs, joints, and more.

    Sivu and music video director Adam Powell are crediting doctors Marc E. Miguel and Andrew David Scott, as well as Barts hospital, for their help in the production.

    The word is still out on whether Sivu was harmed in the making of this film, but because MRIdoes not use ionizing radiation — the high-energy radiation currently used in CT scans that may damage DNA — the FDA reports that there are “no known harmful side-effects associated with temporary exposure to the strong magnetic field used by MRI scanners.”

    Prolonged exposure, however, can result in a slight warming of the body. There’s got to be a good pun in there somewhere.

    Additional info via CNET

    (Source: moshita)

    Victims of Nazi anatomists named Liane Berkowitz was just 19 years old when she was executed by the Nazis. She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 when they caught her putting up posters that displayed messages of protest against an exhibition of Nazi propaganda. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest, but this just led to her execution being postponed until after the birth of her child. Liane’s grim story did not end in her death; her body was one of thousands that were delivered to anatomists and used for dissection and experimentation. The identity of victims who met this same fate is now coming to light thanks to researchers who are scouring legal records to identify the victims of Nazi terror who ended up on anatomists’ dissection tables. Liane was one of 182 people whose corpses were claimed by the anatomy researcher Hermann Stieve, who, at the time, was a leading anatomist at the University of Berlin. The full names of the people on “Stieve’s list” - the vast majority of whom were women - has now been published by Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a German-born anatomist based at the University of Michigan. “Stieve himself put this list together in 1946,” explained Dr Hildebrandt, who has been investigating the history of German anatomy for a decade. Stieve’s own thorough record of his macabre work has enabled her to identify his victims. Stieve’s crimes have been exposed, but Dr Hildebrandt has now focused her efforts of telling the stories of his victims. “I wanted to find out who these people were,” Dr Hildebrandt told the BBC. “I wanted to make them known again.” Read more here.

    Victims of Nazi anatomists named

    Liane Berkowitz was just 19 years old when she was executed by the Nazis.

    She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 when they caught her putting up posters that displayed messages of protest against an exhibition of Nazi propaganda. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest, but this just led to her execution being postponed until after the birth of her child.

    Liane’s grim story did not end in her death; her body was one of thousands that were delivered to anatomists and used for dissection and experimentation.

    The identity of victims who met this same fate is now coming to light thanks to researchers who are scouring legal records to identify the victims of Nazi terror who ended up on anatomists’ dissection tables.

    Liane was one of 182 people whose corpses were claimed by the anatomy researcher Hermann Stieve, who, at the time, was a leading anatomist at the University of Berlin.

    The full names of the people on “Stieve’s list” - the vast majority of whom were women - has now been published by Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a German-born anatomist based at the University of Michigan.

    “Stieve himself put this list together in 1946,” explained Dr Hildebrandt, who has been investigating the history of German anatomy for a decade. Stieve’s own thorough record of his macabre work has enabled her to identify his victims.

    Stieve’s crimes have been exposed, but Dr Hildebrandt has now focused her efforts of telling the stories of his victims.

    “I wanted to find out who these people were,” Dr Hildebrandt told the BBC. “I wanted to make them known again.”

    Read more here.

    ‘I never feel more alive than when I am standing amongst the rows and rows of anatomical specimens at St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum in London, UK. In one jar floats the remains of an ulcerated stomach; in another, the hands of a suicide victim.’ Read the full article in The Lancet here. A great article by Lindsey Fitzharris of The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice - check it out now!

    ‘I never feel more alive than when I am standing amongst the rows and rows of anatomical specimens at St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum in London, UK. In one jar floats the remains of an ulcerated stomach; in another, the hands of a suicide victim.’

    Read the full article in The Lancet here.

    A great article by Lindsey Fitzharris of The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice - check it out now!