Download or read book Body Snatching written by Suzanne M. Shultz and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2005-02-24 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Also called "resurrectionists," body snatchers, were careful not to take anything from the grave but the body--stealing only the corpse was not considered a felony since the courts had already said that a dead body had no owner. ("Burking"--i.e., murder--was the alternative method of supplying "stiffs" to medical schools; it is covered here as well). This book recounts the practice of grave robbing for the medical education of American medical students and physicians during the late 1700s and 1800s in the US, why body snatching came about and how disinterment was done, and presents information on: efforts to prevent the practice, a group of professional grave robbers, and the European experience.

Download or read book Bodysnatchers written by Suzie Lennox and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The grim history of England’s bodysnatching trade: “Lennox’s thorough exploration is riveting” (Naomi Clifford, author of The Disappearance of Maria Glenn). From the string of murders committed by Burke and Hare, a pair of ghouls who are still the stuff of pop culture legend, to the lesser-known but equally gruesome grave-robbing exploits of Henry Gillies, William Patrick, and Joseph Grainger, here is the fascinating true chronicle of England’s “Resurrection Men.” During the winter months of 1742–1832, selling fresh cadavers to anatomists up and down the country, all in aid of medical advancement, was the surest way to earn a living for desperate men. After all, anatomy schools would pay high prices for corpses to dissect—the fresher the better. And they asked no questions as to their origins. This resulted in the criminal underworld of the “Sack ‘em up Men” who left behind disinterred churchyards and burial grounds, and spread fear and horror throughout the United Kingdom. In Bodysnatchers, Suzie Lennox unearths the truth behind the macabre tales, separating fact from folktale, and setting the record straight about Britain’s gruesome, often forgotten history.

Download or read book The Devil s Dictionary written by Ambrose Bierce and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2021-03-16T22:46:04Z with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dictionary, n: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.” Bierce’s groundbreaking Devil’s Dictionary had a complex publication history. Started in the mid-1800s as an irregular column in Californian newspapers under various titles, he gradually refined the new-at-the-time idea of an irreverent set of glossary-like definitions. The final name, as we see it titled in this work, did not appear until an 1881 column published in the periodical The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp. There were no publications of the complete glossary in the 1800s. Not until 1906 did a portion of Bierce’s collection get published by Doubleday, under the name The Cynic’s Word Book—the publisher not wanting to use the word “Devil” in the title, to the great disappointment of the author. The 1906 word book only went from A to L, however, and the remainder was never released under the compromised title. In 1911 the Devil’s Dictionary as we know it was published in complete form as part of Bierce’s collected works (volume 7 of 12), including the remainder of the definitions from M to Z. It has been republished a number of times, including more recent efforts where older definitions from his columns that never made it into the original book were included. Due to the complex nature of copyright, some of those found definitions have unclear public domain status and were not included. This edition of the book includes, however, a set of definitions attributed to his one-and-only “Demon’s Dictionary” column, including Bierce’s classic definition of A: “the first letter in every properly constructed alphabet.” Bierce enjoyed “quoting” his pseudonyms in his work. Most of the poetry, dramatic scenes and stories in this book attributed to others were self-authored and do not exist outside of this work. This includes the prolific Father Gassalasca Jape, whom he thanks in the preface—“jape” of course having the definition: “a practical joke.” This book is a product of its time and must be approached as such. Many of the definitions hold up well today, but some might be considered less palatable by modern readers. Regardless, the book’s humorous style is a valuable snapshot of American culture from past centuries. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Download or read book Stealing Lincoln s Body written by Thomas J. Craughwell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a lively and dramatic narrative, Thomas J. Craughwell returns to this bizarre, and largely forgotten, event with the first book to place the grave robbery in historical context.

Download or read book The Knife Man written by Wendy Moore and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vivid, often gruesome portrait of the 18th-century pioneering surgeon and father of modern medicine, John Hunter. When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he based the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both widely acclaimed and greatly feared. From humble origins, John Hunter rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful, and often fatal, he rejected medieval traditions to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments. Using the knowledge he gained from countless human dissections, Hunter worked to improve medical care for both the poorest and the best-known figures of the era—including Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron. An insatiable student of all life-forms, Hunter was also an expert naturalist. He kept exotic creatures in his country menagerie and dissected the first animals brought back by Captain Cook from Australia. Ultimately his research led him to expound highly controversial views on the age of the earth, as well as equally heretical beliefs on the origins of life more than sixty years before Darwin published his famous theory. Although a central figure of the Enlightenment, Hunter’s tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body snatching. He paid exorbitant sums for stolen cadavers and even plotted successfully to steal the body of Charles Byrne, famous in his day as the “Irish giant.” In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter’s murky and macabre world—a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.

Download or read book Body Snatching in Ohio written by Curt Dalton and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are your ancestors from the 19th century still in their graves? If they were buried in Ohio between 1811 and 1911, that may not be the case. Although physicians needed corpses to teach their students how to take care of the living, these were very difficult to get legally. And so the profession of resurrectionist was born, whose job was to work the night shift, digging up what doctors so desperately needed. Between 1811 and 1881 nearly 5,000 unfortunate souls met this fate in the Buckeye state alone. Body Snatching in Ohio tells a century's worth of tales on grave robbing, murder, and the fight to keep bodies in their graves instead of ending up on the dissection tables.

Download or read book Death Dissection and the Destitute written by Ruth Richardson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early nineteenth century, body snatching was rife because the only corpses available for medical study were those of hanged murderers. With the Anatomy Act of 1832, however, the bodies of those who died destitute in workhouses were appropriated for dissection. At a time when such a procedure was regarded with fear and revulsion, the Anatomy Act effectively rendered dissection a punishment for poverty. Providing both historical and contemporary insights, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute opens rich new prospects in history and history of science. The new afterword draws important parallels between social and medical history and contemporary concerns regarding organs for transplant and human tissue for research.

Download or read book The Body Snatcher s Wife written by Barbra Reifel and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barbra Reifel, former wife of notorious Body Snatcher Michael Mastromarino, has appeared on Oprah, Nancy Grace, ID Discovery, and Lifetime. Never before has her raw account been laid so bare. Fairytale shattered, deceit and danger beyond her wildest nightmares, betrayal, addiction, abuse, ultimate crime, and utter destruction beyond reason—her riveting story is one of so many. To survive, protect her children and family, and combat the monster who was her husband, Barbra evolved…a dreamer turned badass, playing his game to the bittersweet end.

Download or read book The Body snatcher written by Robert Louis Stevenson and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Traffic of Dead Bodies written by Michael Sappol and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Traffic of Dead Bodies enters the sphere of bodysnatching medical students, dissection-room pranks, and anatomical fantasy. It shows how nineteenth-century American physicians used anatomy to develop a vital professional identity, while claiming authority over the living and the dead. It also introduces the middle-class women and men, working people, unorthodox healers, cultural radicals, entrepreneurs, and health reformers who resisted and exploited anatomy to articulate their own social identities and visions. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the American medical profession: a proliferation of practitioners, journals, organizations, sects, and schools. Anatomy lay at the heart of the medical curriculum, allowing American medicine to invest itself with the authority of European science. Anatomists crossed the boundary between life and death, cut into the body, reduced it to its parts, framed it with moral commentary, and represented it theatrically, visually, and textually. Only initiates of the dissecting room could claim the privileged healing status that came with direct knowledge of the body. But anatomy depended on confiscation of the dead--mainly the plundered bodies of African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, and the poor. As black markets in cadavers flourished, so did a cultural obsession with anatomy, an obsession that gave rise to clashes over the legal, social, and moral status of the dead. Ministers praised or denounced anatomy from the pulpit; rioters sacked medical schools; and legislatures passed or repealed laws permitting medical schools to take the bodies of the destitute. Dissection narratives and representations of the anatomical body circulated in new places: schools, dime museums, popular lectures, minstrel shows, and sensationalist novels. Michael Sappol resurrects this world of graverobbers and anatomical healers, discerning new ligatures among race and gender relations, funerary practices, the formation of the middle-class, and medical professionalization. In the process, he offers an engrossing and surprisingly rich cultural history of nineteenth-century America.

Download or read book The Diary of a Resurrectionist 1811 1812 written by James Blake Bailey and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers written by Mary Roach and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-04-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.

Download or read book Rest in Pieces written by Bess Lovejoy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “marvelously macabre” (Kirkus Reviews) history of the bizarre afterlives of corpses of the celebrated and notorious dead. For some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been stolen, burned, sold, pickled, frozen, stuffed, impersonated, and even filed away in a lawyer’s office. Their fingers, teeth, toes, arms, legs, skulls, hearts, lungs, and nether regions have embarked on voyages that crisscross the globe and stretch the imagination. Counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln’s corpse. Einstein’s brain went on a cross-country road trip. And after Lord Horatio Nelson perished at Trafalgar, his sailors submerged him in brandy—which they drank. From Alexander the Great to Elvis Presley, and from Beethoven to Dorothy Parker, Rest in Pieces connects the lives of the famous dead to the hilarious and horrifying adventures of their corpses, and traces the evolution of cultural attitudes toward death.

Download or read book Lincoln s Grave Robbers Scholastic Focus written by Steve Sheinkin and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true crime thriller -- the first book for teens to tell the nearly unknown tale of the brazen attempt to steal Abraham Lincoln's body. Reissued in Scholastic Focus, with an exciting new cover. The action begins in October of 1875, as Secret Service agents raid the Fulton, Illinois, workshop of master counterfeiter Ben Boyd. Soon after Boyd is hauled off to prison, members of his counterfeiting ring gather in the back room of a smoky Chicago saloon to discuss how to spring their ringleader. Their plan: grab Lincoln's body from its Springfield tomb, stash it in the sand dunes near Lake Michigan, and demand, as a ransom, the release of Ben Boyd -- and $200,000 in cash. From here, the action alternates between the conspirators, the Secret Service agents on their trail, and the undercover agent moving back and forth between them. Along the way readers get glimpses into the inner workings of counterfeiting, grave robbing, detective work, and the early days of the Secret Service. The plot moves toward a wild climax as robbers and lawmen converge at Lincoln's tomb on election night: November 7, 1876.A dynamic and thrilling tale from critically acclaimed author Steve Sheinkin.

Download or read book Body Snatchers in the Desert written by Nick Redfern and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-06-21 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Body Snatchers in the Desert reveals the events that really happened in the New Mexico desert in 1947 that birthed the Rosewell Myth. "RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region." Ever since this provocative headline appeared on July 8, 1947, conspiracy theorists have sincerely believed that the U.S. government has maintained an extensive operation of cover-up-and-denial regarding its knowledge of alien life. But there was, in fact, no UFO crash with dead alien bodies. What really happened on that fateful day is much more sinister. The persistent rumors surrounding the UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, are part of a bigger conspiracy—one orchestrated and fostered by the government itself as a smokescreen to bury a truth that is much darker, and disturbingly, far more believable. Now, through never-before-revealed testimony from military whistleblowers, eyewitness intelligence reports, and an astonishing body of corroborative evidence, Nick Redfern lays out a shockingly plausible new theory on the Roswell incident: that the crash-site discovery of prototype military aircraft would expose a damning secret—a highly confidential, U.S. government-sanctioned program to conduct medical experiments on deformed, handicapped, disfigured, and diseased Japanese POWs, exploited as "expendable" victims by their captors. An important account that forces us to take a closer look at both the Roswell story and post-war American history, Body Snatchers in the Desert casts a startling, new light on a shocking conspiracy more than half a century in the making.

Download or read book American Body Snatchers written by Richard S. Ross III and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-07-31 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the 19th century, physicians teaching anatomy in New England medical schools expected students to have hands-on experience with cadavers. As the only bodies that could be dissected legally were convicted murderers, this led to a lack of sufficient bodies for study. These doctors and their students turned to removing the dead from graveyards and cemeteries for dissection. The first medical school in Washington, D.C. was founded in 1825, headed by a Massachusetts physician convicted of body snatching, and made the practice commonplace in the area. This history of body snatching in the 19th century focuses on medical schools in New England and Washington, D.C., along with the religious, moral, and social objections during the time. With research from contemporary newspapers, medical articles, and university archives, topics such as state anatomy laws and their effects on doctors, students, and the poor--who were the usual victims--are covered, as are perceptions of physicians and medical schools by the local communities.

Download or read book The Tale of the Body Thief written by Anne Rice and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Rice is our modern messenger of the occult, whose nicely updated dark-side passion plays twist and turn in true Gothic form.”—San Francisco Chronicle In a gripping feat of storytelling, Anne Rice continues the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles that began with the now-classic Interview with the Vampire. For centuries, Lestat—vampire-hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals—has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Now he is alone. And in his overwhelming need to destroy his doubts and his loneliness, Lestat embarks on the most dangerous enterprise he has undertaken in all the years of his haunted existence. Praise for The Tale of the Body Thief “Tinged with mystery, full of drama . . . The story is involving, the twists surprising.”—People “Fast-paced . . . . mesmerizing . . . silkenly sensuous . . . No one writing today matches her deftness with the [sensual].”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Hypnotic . . . masterful.”—Cosmopolitan