26Biased Anatomy
In the early 20th century, doctors had a biased understanding of human anatomy because of only having access to the cadavers of poor people. In anatomy classes, they were used to the enlarged adrenal glands (which were actually caused by stress from poverty) and thought this was the normal size.
27. Anatomist Antonio Valsalva sometimes tasted the fluids of cadavers he performed autopsies on. One of his notes reads, “Gangrenous pus does not taste good...leaving the tongue-tingling unpleasantly for the better part of the day.”
28. After the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, there were too many bodies to bury, so the corpses were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. Shortly thereafter the bodies began to wash back onshore and survivors constructed funeral pyres to burn the corpses. The fires burned day and night for weeks.
29. The University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility (“The Body Farm”) covers 2.5 acres surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and is used to study body decomposition as well as aid in a criminal investigation.
30. Dogs would often dig up bodies and tombs in ancient Egypt, which was a problem because the dead and their belongings were sacred. So, the Egyptians gave the god Anubis a canine head and made him “protector of the dead.”
