Body Snatchers: the Hidden Side of the History of Anatomy

Abstract

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, anatomical knowledge expanded greatly for human dissections were more and more recognized as essential to medical and surgical training. The need for bodies, especially in private medical schools, increased so much that the bodies legally obtained could not meet the demand. This situation gave rise to underground organizations, known as body snatchers or resurrectionists, which supplied anatomists with bodies which were illegally exhumed from their graves. The lure of money even led some of them to murder people. These malefactors heaped opprobrium on the anatomists who enlisted their services. Notwithstanding their motives, they contributed to the progress of human anatomy.