Crimes for Science Part 1

Anatomy is a science with a gruesome and disturbing past. Think about it, the best way to learn about the inner structure of the human body is to cut open dead human bodies and have a look, which is a little creepy.

It is illegal for scientists to just start chopping up any dead person they want to. Today only people who have donated their bodies to science can be dissected. In the past only criminals or murderers could be cut up and examined. During some time periods human dissection was completely illegal. When anatomy schools started, the demand for fresh cadavers to dissect was greater than the supply. Zealous anatomy professors and students procured bodies in their own, often illegal ways. These early pioneers of anatomy were dedicated enough to risk jail time for science. That's commitment.

Today, anatomy is a much more respectful science than it was in the past, explains Mary Roach in her book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Labs will even hold memorial services for the bodies they dissect. The past, however, was a different story.

Even the very first roots of anatomy are disturbing. In the year 300 B. C. E. Egyptian King Ptolemy was the first ruler to allow dissection of dead criminals. Unfortunately, one of the most prominent scientists of the era, Herophilus (the Father of Anatomy), got a bit over-excited about his work. He dissected criminals while they were alive! No anesthesia, nothing.

In 18th and 19th century England, the same trend of dissecting criminals (deceased) prevailed, only the pool of corpses anatomists could use had been reduced to only executed murderers. Live dissections were also prohibited.

However, their weren't enough executed murderers needed to fill the body quota needed for anatomy classes. Professors took to buying amputated limbs on the black market and stealing bodies from graves. It actually wasn't illegal to steal the dead from their graves because dead bodies were generally thought to be undesirable, and no one thought to make laws against stealing them.

The history of anatomy is so fascinating and gory I had to split up my original super long post into two parts. Next week I'll post part two, stay tuned for more horrific history!

Cures That Didn't Work: The Black Death

Why not live life to it's fullest when it could be over any minute? This was the sentiment of many people living in 14th century Europe during the outbreak of the Black Death. Two million people died from the Black Death, and people who weren't dead knew that they could die any day. In their remaining time on earth they decided to abandon the system and just do whatever they wanted. This wasn't a difficult thing to do because the system had basically fallen apart. During the worst outbreaks of the plague regular society stopped as people became too sick or too dead to do their jobs. Those who were still alive and well suffered from fear of the plague, famine (due to lack of food production), and unsanitary conditions (due to lack of garbage disposal). Anarchy took over the land because the governing class was dead or inactive.

Unknown - Jewish Encyclopedia

What Was the Black Death?

The black death first appeared in Italy in the year 1340 and was spread by sailors throughout Europe all the way up to England and Ireland. By the time it ran its course, the black death killed about two million people. The plague turned many bustling cities into ghost towns.

The sheer magnitude of destruction that the black plague caused is in itself a marker of modern society. Without the complex trade roots and high density of city populations, the black death probably would have started and ended in Italy. Or it might never have sprung up.

Symptoms

People who caught the black death generally died within a week or less. The symptoms started with a flu-like fever followed by vomiting. Then, pus-filled buboes appeared and parts of the skin turned purple from internal bleeding. During the last phase of the plague, the lungs filled with fluid and the patient died.

Ineffective Cures

Fear of the deadly Black Death resulted in many treatments that didn't work. These treatments seem illogical today, but in the midst of all the chaos and terror that surrounded the Black Death people were willing to try anything.

The physicians of the time simply had no idea of how to treat this deadly disease. They argued about how it was spread. Some said it was transmitted by sight, others argued that one could contract the disease just by thinking about it. Most physicians advised to purify the air with fire and good-smelling herbs and to avoid the sick at all costs. Some treated ill patients with blood-letting and pastes made of their own excrement, popular treatments at the time which didn't help anything.

One physician contracted the plague, and shockingly, survived by draining the pus from his own buboes. This cure may have worked, but it didn't stop other crazy cures from springing up.

During the middle ages the Church was a huge part of people's lives and the citizens of Europe wanted the Church to save them from the black death. The Church didn't have the power to do this and most of their priests were actually dead. Since it was the priest's job to deliver the last sacraments to the dying, most priests contracted the plague quickly. Many people lost faith in the Church and turned to other religious cults. One of these was the flagellants, a violent group that marched from town to town beating themselves as a sacrifice to God.  Despite these drastic measures the plague continued it's rampage.

Another awful measure taken to end the plague was a mass assassination of the Jews, who were said to have poisoned the wells causing the plague. Jewish people were tortured until they confessed to helping spread the plague and then they were burned at the stake. After all the Jews were gone, the black death still swept the land, but all the debts the townspeople owed to their Jewish neighbors were gone.

           Burning of Jews during the Black Death epidemic, 1349 Unknown - European chronicle, scanned and cropped from History of the Jewish People by H.H. Ben-Sasson, ed. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1976) p.564-565

Aftermath of the Black Death

Eventually in the late 14th century the plague ran it's course and slowly disappeared, but it certainly didn't leave without a trace. The black death began the end of serfdom because so many died that labor became scarce and the still living peasants could demand higher wages and better conditions. This resulted in the peasants becoming more powerful. Art also changed, it became more macabre and paintings featuring death or illness became the norm.

How Was the Black Death Actually Spread?

The BBC documentary (Medieval Apocalypse) that I watched to learn about the Black Death didn't mention how the disease was actually spread. This sparked my interest so I googled it. According to to The Washington Post and Forbes gerbils, not rats probably brought the disease over from Asia, but there is also some evidence that the Black Death may have been airborne. It's fascinating how we are still questioning how a disease that occurred over hundreds of years ago was spread. I think this just goes to show how complex our world is.

Cholera and How It Changed the World

Where does change come from? When I think about change, I tend to picture social activist groups or something like that, but when I read The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, I realized that change can be instigated by a much more elusive force: disease.

In London England 1854, a baby girl, just born to the Lewis family, died of cholera in a flat on Broad Street. Soon the entire neighborhood was ravaged by the disease which killed thousands of people by the time it ran its course.

Victorian England was not known for being medically advanced. Medical science at the time was practically the same as it was in the Middle Ages. Most people believed that all sickness was caused by "miasmas," or bad air. To quote Edwin Chadwick, a prominent political figure at the time, "All smell is disease."

John Snow, an anesthesiologist working in London at the time, was not convinced by the whole "all smell is disease" idea. He decided to investigate the cause of cholera himself.

After much strenuous snooping, John Snow was convinced that cholera was a water-borne disease. He, with help from local parishioner Henry Whitehead, traced the epidemic back to the Broad Street water pump. The water from this pump was contaminated by the cesspool the Lewis family had dumped the excrement of their sick baby daughter into. Almost everyone who drank from the Broad Street pump died of cholera.

This cholera epidemic was the beginning of a new age. Medical science advanced as people moved away from the old idea of disease and on to the new idea of disease-causing microbes. John Snow and Henry Whitehead created a disease map to show cholera's path of destruction. This map changed epidemiology, and it got people to start looking at the bigger patterns of a disease. The same type of maps are still used today. Cholera also changed waste management systems. People in London no longer piled up their excrement in house-size heaps that were shoveled right into the Thames. Complex sewer systems were built. Now safe sewer systems are a must for developed areas of the world.

This book was a fun read and the pages just flew by. I recommend it to all science and history nerds out there!

Museum Review: The Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk

Do you know what happens when you dissect a moon jelly? You probably can imagine. It is a shapeless blob of goop.

Even with a printed guide to the different parts of the jellyfish, it was still difficult to differentiate between each part during dissection.

When I touched a live moon jelly in action just a few days ago, I was surprised at how firm and defined it was. It was nothing like the dead specimen I dissected in class. The little goopy jellies could apply much more pressure to my hand than I imagined. Touching jellyfish was my favorite part of the visit I made to The Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut, with my family last week.

I think the photos from the jellyfish room turned out well too!

The moon jelly column

My family and I took the Metro North up to Connecticut and we purchased both our train tickets and the aquarium admission at the station. By buying the tickets at the station we got a package deal to see an IMAX movie at the aquarium.

We had no idea about the movie deal so we ended up going to the movie Born to Be Wild unexpectedly. The movie was about rescuing orphaned elephants and orangutans. It was sweet and had great videography. The screen at the movie theatre was huge - it was six stories tall and as wide as two school buses parked end to end.

The aquarium itself was well organized and bigger than I thought it would be. It is family-friendly and most of the visitors I saw on Friday were there with their families. On the second floor there is even a playroom just for toddlers. There were a few hands-on exhibits where visitors were invited to touch jellyfish and stingrays. Stingrays are so soft, I never would have guessed!

The aquarium doesn't only have displays on sea creatures. We visited exhibits on reptiles, amphibians, and meerkats, too.

Weedy Sea Dragon

The gift shop had a large variety of products, including some cute t-shirts and mugs, but, like most gift shops it was expensive.

I liked how this aquarium had tanks of fish found living in the Long Island Sound, which is near the aquarium. Having local marine life on exhibit made wildlife seem closer to home rather than exotic and distant.

Local marine life

The best parts of this aquarium were the ones with living animals in them. The exhibits with just plaques were not as engaging and there could have been fewer of those.

I had a great time visiting The Maritime Aquarium  and I would suggest it to anyone interested in a fun marine-themed outing.