Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Corpse Theft and the Resurrection Men

Episode Date: June 10, 2014

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We stole your grandpa. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Guys, after you're the show, be sure to join us as a bargain as our offer drink if you're taking from this show. Um, guys, give it up for our solo! So I'll come and give you a show about medical history. And nothing the host say should be taken as medical advice for opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We make you learn to. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of All right. You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right?

You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right?

You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right?

You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? You all right? I'm sorry, sitting at my triple redundancy recording back up. Hi everybody, welcome to someone's misguided tour of medical weight, weight, and tracker. Back it up, which? Just an edicure? Just cut at this point?

Cut in. Hello everybody, and welcome to someone's a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your girl who's just a macro. Thank you. God of Medicine, I'm your girl host, Justin Macri. I'm David. I'm David. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney.

I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney.

I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. I'm Sydney. Kill him, kill him. This is Saubar's, which is the mental history show we do together. And today we're doing it in New York City. New York City, not only the home of some of the best salsa. But I mean there's so many, it's such a big, I mean, it's a big app way to use the so many lady Libre here,

Pita, like the first pizza was here, the first, I mean, we have both of those posters. My sister's here? My sister's here, it's the city's sister Taylor's here, I'm sure we're really here by what I have to. Oh. I'm sorry. So you're not forgetting? Well, it's also the home of the first riot in America. I'm not just not convinced. The first riot that ever happened, you believe it right here in New York? It's not really, it's like, good, it's my, my ghost busters ones

or not really happy. It's pretty true. I mean, it's a good, it's my, my ghost busters ones, or not really happy. It's pretty true. I mean it's a big, it's a big deal. So what was it about on the assuming it was over like the Yankees? You guys were like, oh well, I mean it was in 1788, I don't know. It makes your original race, pizzas, they're really good. The bad love of the Rays. Well, I mean predictably it was about cadavers, you know, courses. Okay. Dissecting dead people?

They're actually beginning. We do lost here or five minutes in a loss. Okay, well, I want to tell you about the first riot, but before we get there, I need to kind of give you some history of dissection. So we're going to talk about cutting up dead people for a while. Right now, I assume there is a percentage of this audience. It is not listed as solvows before that. You'll be able to tell them because they're looking at the person they brought them like this. What is this? What is this show? The Happening? This is art. I was a hard one. So of course I went to medical school and key to medical education is dissecting the academic, so to learn anatomy, not for fun, not for fun, but also the thought was fun.

What? I don't know. You have to be quite confident. I don't know. You have to be quite confident. Yes, I'm't know. You're going to be a big question. You're confronted by, I guess. Yes. That's fair. It's very profound. It was profound.

Fair. And that's kind of intrinsic to learning about human body. You have to, you know, kind of open and take a peek inside. And we've been doing that for a really long time. In ancient Egypt, they used to dissect corpses, although not really the word about them. It was just part of the burial process, so they could like, you know, put their organs in all the nice little jars.

They thought that one. They thought the organs maybe went bad in a different rate for the rest of the body. That was, it's a good thing. You're still not gonna smell bad, or you're not gonna smell bad, or you're not gonna smell bad, or you're not gonna smell bad. Pickled them.

Perfect. They did. Delicious. So it was okay. It was cool to dissect bodies because it was part of a religious belief. In Greece, it was actually technically illegal to do that, but people did it in any way and nobody really stopped anybody. So there were a lot of things happening in Greece and This was like way down the paris. Exactly. And it was purely in pursuit of knowledge. So a lot of the physicians would

dissect the daffors and they'd have their medical students around and it was all very, I don't know, have any great trogos and they look very serious. You know, Greece. I know a Greece is like, or Greece is Greece. And they published all kinds of drawings and texts, and they put together all kinds of collections of this information, which was really important because in Rome, it was illegal, and they took it seriously.

It was a hard line against it. Yes, there was no dissecting. I'm sure that people tried, but for the most part, it wasn't widespread, which is why a lot of Gaillan, who was one of the prominent Roman physicians, a lot of his drawings and his antomical writings are only their second hand. They were all based on the great stuff, or they were from primates that he dissected.

Just kind of said, it was a human. So that's true. Just that problem. Which is why it was actually a lot of it turned out to be kind of wrong. Oh, good. But that was a big problem in anatomy for a long time. I was trying to reconcile that. A common misconception is that the church was against dissection. That is not true.

We have actually made me said that at some point during our podcast before actually Yes, we may have perpetuated that particular I think I have I think I have because as I as I dug into this I thought well of course the church is against it Obviously any kind of like progress that you know I love you! We're talking with many languages. It's very different. Don't get on, don't get your hackles on the offer. Okay?

You too, chill. We're just saying at that time, there was a little rush. There was a little like, you know, what's the center of the universe, Earth's on the whole thing. Okay, back then. No, no. Ow.

Man. We were leaving them. The church wasn't against it. Right. No. That was just our misconception. It's a sorry about that. No.

There's actually, it was a papal edict that was totally misinterpreted. At the time, it was common practice. If you were a soldier and you died overseas away from your home country, they knew that you'd want to be buried in your home country. So to get you back there without having to carry a lot of dead bodies back, they would cut the bodies in the little pieces, boil them, remove the bones, and then take the bones back home to bury them. Well, that's how I felt. Okay. Alright finally me and the

Pope are coming. Tell her the hats. We're both a little cats. The Pope said please don't think that's gross. It's really gross please stop and somehow that was misinterpreted as don't dissect that risk for educational educational benefit. All right, so you know, so that's it. See, see, okay. In the middle ages, as we've mentioned, people are really into gross stuff. To use clinical terminology.

So, dissection started to become really popular. And it was like a big deal. If you were gonna dissect a corpse, you would sell tickets. It was like the circus or the fair coming to town. We're going to dissect people. I mean, everybody came this time in the 1315. So a long time ago, you know, you'd have the anonymous and then I don't know, just a ton of people hanging around eating popcorn. I was wondering.

How did we have a lot of porn in the 1315 team? What did we have? We did, right? We did. I've been popcorn in the think he did. You did? Somebody did, it was lonely. I want the royalties. I'm sorry. But Da Vinci, of course, secretly dissected people. No. He wasn't supposed to, but he did. Almost lie.

That's what Da Vinci code is about, actually. And it is, really. It was all for that Vitruvian man thing. That was it. He really wanted to perfect Vitruvian. He just wanted to make it perfect. He was a man. He was a man.

He was a man. He was a man. He was a man. He was a man. He was a man. it is, really. It was all for that Vitru V in Man thing. That was it. He really wanted to make it perfect. No, he just wanted to make it perfect. You can't joke. I believe everything you say, I want to say.

No questions. And the Catholic Church actually paid for a dissection to take place at one point. They hosted one. The kick started a dissection. At one point they hosted one. The kick started and I said, in 1533 there were conjoined twins who died and they wanted to see, this was the reasoning, they didn't know where the soul was. And so they dissected the twins to see, where is the soul and do they have one or two?

They haven't, their family's been through it. I bet they couldn't find their assumption of what was well, the joint twins from our souls. That's pretty messed up, good joint twins. That's what's actually a pretty commonplace. There were a lot of religious figures who were dissected, especially people who were to become saints later to see if you could tell a difference when you looked inside the body of a really holy person as opposed to me or you. One, a non-Kiara of Monty

Falko, she later became a saint. So after she died she was dissected and again this is purely we're just trying to figure out the answer here. And it was claimed that they found a crucifix in her heart. Thanks. Oh, that's true. You're welcome. Ah. I want to make sure you guys got that one too.

It's going to carry a room for the park as a party audience, but I'll have them call you later. It's a way to look like. More likely they did find this. I'm a park ass reporter, but I'll have them call you later. It's a way of life. More likely they did find this. They claim that there were three gold stones in per gold ladder. Perfect. But they thought this represented the Holy Trinity itself.

Oh, okay, yeah. Proof. What if there have been four? Whoa, we got to zone on. Then she wouldn't be a saint. There's another dude? Oh no. In the 17th and 18th century, that's when you've ever seen like operating theaters,

where they have all kind of like this, something in the round, and then we'd be cutting somebody up. Imagine exactly like this except city was cutting my body parts. Yes. You can imagine that, right? In my side. So, and that was also really popular. You can imagine that right in your mind side. So and that was also really popular.

And a lot of times again it was medical students, but you could buy tickets because if you're going to do something, why not make money off of it? Sure. So you could sell tickets and then if you were a dignitary or a visiting royal, you were always welcome to come and view a dissection at part of your royal privilege. I guess. I guess. And that's what you want to do.

But the problem was, this is where we're getting somewhere, I promise. I bet you. The problem was crazy. The problem was that only certain people were allowed to dissect. So there was the Royal College of Physicians, and then there was the company of barber surgeons. Equally important. And I was one I trust so far.

And between the two of them, they were allowed 10 dissections a year total. That was it. Why? It was arbitrary just because they didn't want, you know, people cutting out people left and right. They wanted it to be a very, firstly, one of the right people doing it, so you had to be an official dissector. Okay.

And secondly, they didn't want it, you know, to be too base, like, who will the commoners? They wanted to keep it special. I want to maintain some of the magic. I'm going to make it a little piece. Take it up, I'm going to make it. Maybe that's right. Maybe it looks a bad.

It would be like if WrestleMania happened 20 times here. That's not what I hear. And there's 10 WrestleMania here, but yeah, that's right, it looks a bad, it would be like if WrestleMania happened 20 times a year, that's not what I hear. If there's 10 WrestleMania, you have any of that, something. So because there was this growing demand, more medical students, we need to dissect more courses, they said, well, we'll make the coolest name to act ever, the Murder Act of 1752, which allowed physicians to dissect the bodies of murderers who had been condemned to death. And it actually added crimes that were not just punishable by death, but punishable by dissection.

You know? Because it was considered like an insult even beyond. We're not just going to kill you, then we're going to send you to a medical school and the students are gonna cut you up. That is unsettling. I would not, I would probably avoid those crimes. I had avoid those crimes anyway, just kidding.

But those are the, I would add those to the list for sure, certainly. But this still didn't meet their demand for cadavers. We still need more. And so that's when we give rise to great robbers and the resurrection men. The resurrection men? I want to be a resurrection man. It's a cool thing you don't hurt. You know what they do?

They do. Care and do anything. Anything. To be a resurrection man. This is just a resurrection man. This would be great. So ban. This would be a ban. So I'm going to turn to you. This would be like a typical resurrection ban heist if you want to compare to that.

Oh my god, here's really okay. So wait a minute, just to clarify, not only, you know, I something called a resurrection ban, but I'm doing horse. Okay, what's that? It's a goat. You're probably wear a hat. Sidearm? Yeah. What's the sweet shovel?

Okay, what's going on? So a resurrection then would be paid to go to a cemetery in the middle of the night and and they were pros at this. They could do all of this within an hour, under an hour. They would find a grave, usually they're looking for somebody who was poor and definitely have to be recently dead. Because we didn't belong people, we didn't belong to them, so they have to be very recently dead. So, and the hope was that it would be somebody nobody would be like, and they would just dig up one into the grave, they're all the dirt on their tarp. They would drill little holes in the top of the coffin,

like perforated so they could break it open. Pull the body out with a hook on a chain. Put the clothe. That's the exact proper noise out here. It's good job. It's a very trained behavior. Back in, so you got to address it, but the clothes back in.

Puppet head is inside the closet. I'm happy this stud's sticking out. I potatoes inside the closet. How did this stunts thinking out when I was a caricature? But it struck the American head and I thought, Well you did this when you were a fan. You ran a face on a balloon. And then replaced everything and be gone and you could never tell they were there. Resurrection. If they... A lot of people must have... ...take public transportation and they would say, like, this is my drunk...

This is my drunk buddy that I've got with me. So, you told me, is the old town in Wigida Buries? Okay, so this is true, but check. I'm so into a resurrection man. I'm doing a high-stand doing'm doing my kid in a party as well. I screwed up my life so bad. I was a whole other bad. Some students and doctors didn't want to pay people so they would just do it themselves

but they were never as good at it which is why people would get caught a lot. The peak season was November March since everything was cooler. You can imagine that. That's festive. And medical schools even had like secret entrances for them to deliver the bodies, like secret points. You know, the back way. Yeah. The medicines, the medicines that I skilled at my car before the mouth. Families of course got wise to this. It came up with all kinds of ways to guard graves against this.

Sometimes it would just be as simple as they keep the body at their house until they knew it was decomposed enough that nobody would steal it. Sorry. I want to go back to the room. You could just hire a guard or you could guard it yourself or they would build cages around the entire grave. I got a lot to think about. I'm going to go to the splurge.

Of course, go to the floor. It was cut a mort-safe. A what? Mort-safe. Okay. A mort-safe. It was caught a more safe. Sometimes they get found out because a couple of dignitaries were visiting a local medical school and they recognized one of the cadabres from the table as the US Senator John Scott Harrison who was the son of President. Are you a relative?

No son! It's more of a great little talk of US Senator. I got his Facebook card. The dog. These dignitaries knew him because they were his son and his nephew. Oh, okay, now I understand. It's like your grandpa's favorite story. I realized it was my dad.

Your great, great, great grandpa. William Henry Harris. William Henry Harris. Now, as you can imagine, people need bodies. They'll pay a lot of money. The medical schools will pay a lot of money. And they, you know, families were getting wise.

The authorities were trying to stop great robbers. Well, what's the easiest way to get a dead body then? War. So they started a war. No. Murder. Murder. Murder most foul. Murder was my second guess.

So this led to, in Edinburgh, there were the Burke and Hariburters, 16 people were murdered altogether. And they were all, the doctors said they didn't know that this is where the bodies were coming from. But they would get their victims drunk and then suffocate them because at the time, I guess, you couldn't figure that out, that that's what happened. Like a dead body, the police were were like we're fat-fold we have no idea how they died we have this first story it's like we're going blue man it's like we're already so difficult

the largest tongue was and you're actually in struggle his core he was so war he could only afford a robe for a necktie. Hard breaking. This case is closed. We did hear him. Eventually they think it caught. And as punishment, Burke was, he had capital punishment,

they had the state killer. They dissected him and displayed him as punishment, and they took his skin and made a purse out of it, which you can still go see, at the Museum of Edinburgh, at the police museum of Edinburgh, to this day. So, the whole museum.

I know. Now, here's the thing. So all this was happening, a lot of what we've talked about is in the UK. They eventually passed the Anatomy Act, which allowed them to execute all dead criminals no matter how they died, which I guess are their problems, but in the US? Yes, I said. But in the US that wasn't going off. So we had some laws that we started to, you know, over the US, we were a branded country

at this point. We're trying to develop our own medical schools and have our own doctors because we don't. We don't have many doctors at all, even the ones that came up from England. And so in the year 1784 and 1790, we start adding, again, dissection is a punishment for murder so that we can have some bodies too. But grave robbing was still definitely happening, so we were coming up here and it's the same thing. So we're going to finally talk about the riot. In 1788, there was a young men's student named John Hicks and he was working at New York Hospital, dissecting the corpse, as was gotten practice.

And it probably was a corpse that was robbed in a grave. He noticed some kids playing outside. I thought you guys saw kids inside the car. Like a phoom like jaws tightness. He noticed kids playing outside, and they were trying to peek in the window to figure out what he was doing. So I guess he has a terrible sense of humor. He killed the kids.

No. He picked up the cadavers' arm, which had already been detached. And waved it out the window with the children, and said, you kids, get away from here. This is your mother's arm, and I'll slap you with it if you don't go away. I'll slap you. You know, Mr. Rogers was so different. You could barely even watch this show,

it was very mature. Now the kids were pretty scared. Yeah. And unfortunately, in that weird twist of fate, one of the children had recently lost their mother. So they went home and told their dad who got together a posse, and they were like, A resurrection man.

Yes. Just 10 are you with us, you know me? I mean, we were gonna ask him, who? Let me get a little bullet tosser. That's what I call my gun. Brad Pitt. So you're Brad Pitt, what do I mean? Matthew.

Matthew Lillard. I don't know why Matthew was like that. You gotta have one like breakthrough performance just like he was much better than I thought he was. So they went down to the graveyard first to check to see if this was true. And unfortunately, her grave had been robbed. Oh no! Now there's no evidence that any of that was connected.

It was just one of those weird coincidences, but that was all the evidence, of course. They needed it. Because they're old timey dudes and they're like, just jies, so people could go kill somebody. And they're mad. They're mad. They're mad. And they're mad. So they storm down to the colleges about 100 of them. They completely destroy the anatomy lab.

They just recap it on the whole hospital. They beat the crap out of some medical students, because why not? They're always in the way. You're right. They also rated the home of one prominent doctor in town, whose name was Sir John Temple. And as best as we can figure the reason they picked him is because they thought his name was Surgeon.

Seriously, this is what the best... Why this doctor... Surgeon Temple. search and temple. We're going to get in. So a lot of the authority stepped in and they actually put a lot of the doctors and students in jail for protection because this mob was growing and they knew people were mad and they were not done because the next day they returned with 5,000 men and they were going to storm Columbia college as well. So they took off, they went down to Columbia, they wreaked some havoc there, beat some more people up, or some more stuff up, and then they decided all

the doctors and students are here, they're in jail, we're headed to the jail. So they got to the jail, and at that point the governor had already called in the militia, so they were met by the militia and the governor, and Alexander Hamilton was there. Because why not? Now this starts on like a dream. So, Mr. Lone was like, I'm really not a you. Thanks, Tom. That's based on a real dream that I know. I can't hear about that earlier. So, he's heard about like three times.

If he gets better, I'm... I'm... Especially if he's too strong. So there is a wealthy baron who sees that we got to stand off. We got all these men who are angry and we've got the militia, the governor, and the outtaker. And everybody, there's a big standoff and this baron is standing there and this little wealthy guy. He's like, don't shoot them. We can resolve this peacefully. And then one of the mom and the mob just chucks a rocket in his head, knocks him out

and as he gets back up he goes, shoot him off. And so they did, they opened fire. Now luckily there were a lot of doctors nearby. I knew where I were from. So many were wounded, only eight people died. So that would, I mean, I mean, eight people, it's not. Still a lot. I mean, still a size one. For America's first riot, we didn't do too much to pronounce. And after that, that led to a lot of changes in anatomy laws.

And the US, they started saying, you know what? Why don't we also include bodies that haven't been claimed? So within 48 hours, if the body hadn't been claimed, they could send it to the med school, although that didn't include soldiers, and it didn't include people from out of town. On the basis that if you're from out of town, maybe somebody is coming to find you. So if we, if we die, you know what cool.

Well, I don't know about cool. At last we look like vagrants because if we look like vagrants then we're free again. Oh good, cool. I don't know what that look like vagrants. What an excellent, excellent publishing code of this episode of Small Bones. Anything else about how many corpses are what's going to happen to us when we die in New York? Anything else you want to tack on? Well, now, of course, it's a lot more common to donate a body to science that was, you know,

rare and frowned upon for many years. But nowadays, it's accepted that it's a wonderful gift that you can provide, you know, rare in frowny con for many years, but nowadays it's accepted that it's a wonderful gift that you can provide, you know, or that all of us, what, not just medical students, me and society, it's still, I thought this was, I didn't know this, unclang bodies are still sent to medical schools and dissected. That's still in place.

Although there are many more bodies that are donated that it's still done. Who figures out how this is? It is bizarre. Folks, that's gonna do it for us for this episode figures out how those are? That is bizarre. Folks, that's going to do it for us for this episode of Solvins. Thank you so much for listening to our program. I know you don't really have much choice because you're here.

It's loud. It's a lot of the door. It's a real fire hazard. And you're actually, who's your first solvins? You make a new episode every Tuesday. It's on the maximum of fun network finance all out of the show.com. Thank you to the taxpayers for using a theme song, a third song, Medicines, which was the interior and the outro of Armored River Rim.

Thank you so much to do the People's in Prop Theater, right with us here at the Slovets. That's all I have to say. That's how I don't kill a fool in your head. That's all I have to say. All ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.