Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Body Snatching: where lies the evil?

In the selected reading from Body Snatching, one common theme is constantly recurring: people see not the evil of the doctor's but rather the necessity of their situation.  Where did the sympathy come from; could the doctors have earned their respect or did they merely place it on another object (one more visible to the public perhaps)?  It wasn't long before the time of this tale that people feared the doctors and their trade.  It appears that there was a sudden swing in the population. It was as if the practice was socially accepted, and, instead, the method by which bodies were procured and treated became the subject of scrutiny.

The reading on a whole discusses the various methods by which bodies could be obtained, who furthered the practice of body snatching, and who did the snatching. The reading leaves no ambiguity in the matter of who facilitated the practice at had (it was the anatomists), and leaves little doubt in the matter of the amount of care that they gave to how the bodies were obtained; their only requirement was that the bodies be fresh.  The methods of extraction, as well as the extractors, were discussed in detail.  Great care went into these three portions of the story, and to what end?  The author clearly sculpts a picture of corrupt anatomists (dabbling in corpse trafficking, often coordinating the exercise themselves). She also goes on to showcase a prime example where the practice is over-stepped in the public view. On the final page, "the editors seem to be more outraged by the public discovery of the body than by the purpose for which it was acquired" (Shultz, 41).

My question to you is this: Why, after seeing this kind of abuse on part of the anatomists, did anger still fall on the resurrectionists, and not the anatomists?


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