“...who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” Shakespeare penned these words for the tragic king Macbeth, as he contemplated mortality and its seeming insignificance. But in the world of anatomy, once the actor quits his role, he continues to speak. Anatomists, students, the morbidly curious: all have flocked to dissections for centuries searching for answers. Unknowingly, audiences flock to theatres for the same reasons. Theatre, in the same way as dissection, searches for answers within the human self. Sometimes these answers are concrete, like the location of the heart or the rationale behind suicide; other times they are more metaphysical, like the weight of a human soul, or standing against the desires and influences of societal norms (Roach). As curious, sentient beings, we crave answers, especially to our own inner workings; theatre and dissection are both tools used to explore and discover these ideas and answers.
The practice of dissection dates back to the ancient eras. The Mayans sculpted busts depicting human heads, half flesh and half skull (Wikipedia). Ancient Egyptian documents depict a rudimentary understanding of human anatomy (Ebers Papyrus). It is not until the Golden Age of the Greek civilization that Herophilos, considered the father of Anatomy, was one of the first to publically perform and record his dissections (faqs.org). From these rough origins, the practice of dissection grew in private, behind closed doors, as many cultures looked down upon it as a desecration of the dead. Dissection stayed a quiet, solely academic practice until the early Renaissance when interest in the search for knowledge was renewed and the state began to fund public dissections. The sta...
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Mary had soon decided that she wanted to become a trained doctor after watching her father doctor the injured farmers. She had developed a desire for an unusual career for a mid-19th century American wo...
“One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought…” (Letter 4.21). If you are familiar with the story of Victor Frankenstein, then you probably already know that he procured stolen body parts in order to construct his famous monster. This form of grave robbing is an appropriate nod to similar events taking place at this time in history. The 18th and 19th centuries saw a fierce dispute between advancements in medicine and the morally skeptical. Such an issue plagued select regions of both North America and Great Britain, most prominently the United States and England, respectively.
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While the concept of the profession began in the 17th century, our paper will focus more on the contemporary American history starting in the 1940s. Dr. Amos Johnson, a founder of the American Board of Family Practice, hired a hospital orderly named Henry Treadwell to assist in the daily activities of his office. Dr. Johnson’s practice in Garland, North Carolina, initiated the spread of the physician assistant model across the state. Dr. Eugene Stead and his general medicine residents at Duke University took interest in this idea. In 1942, due to the lack of adequate medical care during World War II, Dr. Stead created a three year medical doctorate fast-track program. This sparked the idea that perhaps one day he could implement a similar program to alleviate the physician shortage in the United States.
Modern day embalming may have started in the United States, but a different form was used in ancient times across the world. The most famous example of preserving
...or or exterior? This dichotomy correlates to idea of separation, or even conflict, between mind and body. Are the two separate, or are they symbiotic, and entirely dependent on each other? Just as some people believe that meditation can clarify or synchronize the mind and body, my work is a process that symbolically expresses trauma, disease, and death, beyond what is apparent from a physical body, bringing about a similar synchronization.
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The history of anatomy and physiology dates back to ancient Egyptian times when humans were mummified after death and bodies would be stripped of their internal organs during the embalming process. It was not until much later when Hippocrates II, known as the father of medicine, was the first to write about human anatomy. Shortly after that, the Alexandrian Medical School was established, where human dissection was allowed for the first time, which promoted research and new discoveries in the field. From there, many other influential researchers came up with theories regarding the cardiovascular and nervous systems, etc; however, the missing links in some of the earlier theories was found with the discovery of the microscope, which changed the focus of research and led to many advancements in the field. As previously mentioned, Hippocrates II (460 – 370 B.C.) was known as the father of medicine and although human dissection was forbidden because of religious beliefs, he dissected animals and studied the anatomy of bones.
During the earlier times of anatomy, dissection of a human cadaver was prohibited. Many scientists used animals for dissection, and related it to the human body. The intrinsic study of anatomy began around the fifth century B.C. starting with the works of two scientists/writers, Alcmaeon (500 B.C.) and Empedocles (490-430 B.C.). During this time, Greek philosophers struggled with whether the heart or the head of a human was the center of the body. The first scientist to dissect part of the human body for research was Alcmaeon. He dissected out the eye and observed the optic chiasma and the connection of the optic nerve with the brain. [1] From there, he created the theory that the human brain was the center of intelligenc...