Speaker 1: The scribe sat down to do his work. It was
Speaker 1: just like any other day. He was in the business
Speaker 1: of copying and pasting millennia before we had computers to
Speaker 1: do the job for us. Bent over the page, he
Speaker 1: carefully scratched out over four hundred lines of hieroglyphs. This
Speaker 1: was a really important project. The document he was copying
Speaker 1: was already over a thousand years old, and its preservation
Speaker 1: was important. But although he was a master of his craft,
Speaker 1: he was a bit out of his depth with what
Speaker 1: he was transcribing. The source document talked about the human
Speaker 1: body from the top down and from the inside out,
Speaker 1: and this scribe was encountering glyphs he had never seen before.
Speaker 1: He scratched out his errors and made notes in the
Speaker 1: margins his writing implement, clumsily, making strokes for characters unfamiliar
Speaker 1: to him. In fact, according to later scholars, he created
Speaker 1: the earliest known asterisks in the history of bookmaking. But
Speaker 1: what did make it onto his page was really marvelous stuff.
Speaker 1: A collection of anatomical case studies and a treatise detailing
Speaker 1: scientific procedures for dealing with various injuries. And then, in
Speaker 1: the middle of his project, somewhere between the thorax and
Speaker 1: the spinal column he quit. No one knew why, not James,
Speaker 1: Henry Breasted, or any of the Egyptologists who came before him.
Speaker 1: It had landed on his desk in nineteen twenty, already
Speaker 1: estimated to be thirty years old. But James saw something
Speaker 1: important and alarming when the scribe started writing again. He
Speaker 1: started copying something completely different. Magical incantations to fight pestilence,
Speaker 1: spells to manage women's health concerns, and tricks to make
Speaker 1: old men young again. James and his fellow Egyptologists didn't
Speaker 1: know for sure, but they suspected that this ancient scribe
Speaker 1: was unaware of the importance of the work he had
Speaker 1: left unfinished, and James would go on to spend years
Speaker 1: pouring over it. It proved to be a singular, remarkable artifact,
Speaker 1: the earliest known evidence of human dissection as a practice,
Speaker 1: a blueprint for ancient scientific surgery. Experts believe that the
Speaker 1: original document copied by the scribe was known as the
Speaker 1: Secret Book of the Physician and had originally circulated more
Speaker 1: than five thousand years ago. This document was important because
Speaker 1: it gave evidence of a stark departure from folk medicine
Speaker 1: and magic, replacing it with rational scientific observation. It represented
Speaker 1: a remarkable moment in time when people were finally pulling
Speaker 1: the body apart and going inside of it to seek
Speaker 1: out answers to its deepest mysteries. Sadly, James and his
Speaker 1: contemporaries never found the source document, and because of that
Speaker 1: we might never know how the original book ended. What
Speaker 1: did the ancient Egyptians know about our inner workings? And
Speaker 1: how long ago did they know it? How much was
Speaker 1: lost only to need to be rediscovered again in a
Speaker 1: different time, in a different place. For the moment, it
Speaker 1: seems like it's lost to history, but the quest continues,
Speaker 1: and as a story it illustrates a powerful idea. Even today,
Speaker 1: we're still hard at work adding to our body of knowledge.
Speaker 1: I'm Aaron Manky, and welcome to bedside Manners. Corpses have
Speaker 1: been a hot commodity for centuries. Over two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: physicians in Greece were busy doing human dissections on the
Speaker 1: unknowing dead and surgery on the unlucky living. They wanted
Speaker 1: to know what made a person tick, But, as it
Speaker 1: so often happens, moral taboos around the body won the
Speaker 1: day and practices changed around one fifty b C. The
Speaker 1: Romans had banned human dissection, so physicians were forced to
Speaker 1: take a bit more of the offhand approach, if you will.
Speaker 1: They began working on animal corpses, which were a poor
Speaker 1: substitute for now of the reasons. And with this turn,
Speaker 1: the parade of scientific progress around understanding our cavities ground
Speaker 1: to a halt. But hungry minds never stopped seeking, They
Speaker 1: just started to look elsewhere. Around one sixty two, A. D.
Speaker 1: Claudius Galen came to Rome as a physician. He was rich,
Speaker 1: well traveled, and educated, having dabbled in many schools of medicine.
Speaker 1: He was also arrogant and popular, serving as a physician
Speaker 1: to gladiators and emperors alike. But Galen's lasting legacy would
Speaker 1: change the course of medicine for centuries. His impact came
Speaker 1: in the form of a theory, one which had been
Speaker 1: handed down by the ancient physician Hippocrates. It had to
Speaker 1: do with how precise balance of certain bodily fluids could
Speaker 1: make or break a person's health, and because he was
Speaker 1: both prolific in his writings and a fanatical self promoter,
Speaker 1: his ideas stuck around for a very long time the
Speaker 1: Renaissance changed that. Though it was an explosive time of
Speaker 1: profound cultural change, a veritable feast of scientific inquiry and art,
Speaker 1: it was the perfect moment to interrogate the past and
Speaker 1: to find new ways forward. At the time, European medical
Speaker 1: schools were in the bad habit of not asking hard
Speaker 1: hitting questions. They simply passed down the truths of the ancients.
Speaker 1: The Catholic Church, meanwhile, had been practicing dissections throughout the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, well before the return of secular practice. During
Speaker 1: the Renaissance. The clergy was in the habit of slicing
Speaker 1: open their own in the search for physical proof of holiness,
Speaker 1: and these sanctioned examinations did yield earthly gains. More folks
Speaker 1: began to think about what dissection could offer outside the
Speaker 1: walls of the church. By the mid fifteen hundreds, though
Speaker 1: emboldened anatomists and training had taken notes Galen had never
Speaker 1: opened a body, how could he possibly know what went
Speaker 1: on inside there. They were out to shake the foundations
Speaker 1: of their own profession. Flemish anatomist Andreas Vassilias wanted to
Speaker 1: bring this practice back to the broader public. In fifty three,
Speaker 1: he public the first ever systematic map of human anatomy.
Speaker 1: His contemporaries soon followed, suits in droves and European operating
Speaker 1: theaters opened for audiences. It was entertainment, but probably not
Speaker 1: the sort of show that you'd want to see after dinner.
Speaker 1: With the founding of London's Royal Company of Barber Surgeons
Speaker 1: around the same time, the city attempted to establish two
Speaker 1: distinct professional classes, those engaged in high level anatomical work
Speaker 1: and those considered to be haircutters and bleeders. But although
Speaker 1: there were anatomical theaters in London, there were no dedicated
Speaker 1: schools to attend. This was due to the very strict
Speaker 1: laws around what one could do with the dead, which
Speaker 1: was well not a lot throughout the UK. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of restrictions that kept teachers and students from
Speaker 1: accessing bodies. One of the most effective was the Company
Speaker 1: of Barber Surgeons monopoly on the few corpses of executed
Speaker 1: criminals that were legally donated each year. In places like Paris,
Speaker 1: laws were more relaxed, so anatomical schools could access pps
Speaker 1: Is for students to dissect. If London was going to
Speaker 1: be a competitive place to train, there was an educational
Speaker 1: void that needed to be filled. But you know what
Speaker 1: they say, where there's a will, there's a way, along
Speaker 1: with a bit of ingenuity to go with it. And
Speaker 1: if you give an enterprising mind a scalpel, they're going
Speaker 1: to want their own dissecting room to enter. William Hunter
Speaker 1: William was a Scotsman who came to London around seventeen
Speaker 1: forty two specialize in obstetrics, but what he found instead
Speaker 1: was barely better than what he had had at home.
Speaker 1: After some time, he decided to go his own way,
Speaker 1: providing pupils with his own courses in dissecting, operative procedures
Speaker 1: and bandaging. In the once opulent and now ceed Covent
Speaker 1: Gardens neighborhood of London, William rented a flat right there
Speaker 1: among the brothels and tenements. Williams set up a shop,
Speaker 1: not a bachelor pad, mind you, but one for corpses
Speaker 1: and those who sought to learn from them. In seventeen
Speaker 1: forty five, though something changed. There was a split within
Speaker 1: the company of barber surgeons, with the barber's and the
Speaker 1: surgeons each going their separate ways, and because of this,
Speaker 1: the surgeons were obliged to relax their rules around how
Speaker 1: human dissection occurred in London and who got to partake.
Speaker 1: Within a year, William was advertising his lectures, offering the
Speaker 1: community and I quote the opportunity of gentlemen learning the
Speaker 1: art of dissection during the whole winter session in the
Speaker 1: same manner as at Paris, and by all accounts, William's
Speaker 1: school was an overnight sensation. In time, he would even
Speaker 1: go on to expand his small solo operation into a
Speaker 1: family business by inviting his brother John to join his ranks.
Speaker 1: Both men were incredibly hard workers and together the brothers
Speaker 1: would change the world. They would open up a bold
Speaker 1: new landscape in the field of anatomical study. They couldn't
Speaker 1: have been more different. While William had a knack for
Speaker 1: drawing crowds, his brother John shrank from the attention. William
Speaker 1: was refined and John was rough. William was smooth and
Speaker 1: John was abrasive. But John was also fresh faced and bright.
Speaker 1: Arriving from their Scottish home with an insatiable mind and
Speaker 1: boundless gusto, he took the shadowing William in both the
Speaker 1: classroom and the operating theater. He took classes alongside the
Speaker 1: other young minds and even acted as his older brother's assistant. Together,
Speaker 1: they worked to make William's vision of his anatomy school
Speaker 1: come to life. John, for his part, settled in happily
Speaker 1: at twenty. He was finding his way and doing so
Speaker 1: with beguiling confidence. He soon became a man about town,
Speaker 1: frequenting the bars and theaters and coffee shops in the
Speaker 1: colorful Covent Gardens area, and he developed relationships of all kinds,
Speaker 1: some that would later come to help him with his work.
Speaker 1: You see, William had given John a special task. It
Speaker 1: was far from pretty, but to him it was a
Speaker 1: privileged position. He would be in charge of finding fresh
Speaker 1: specimens for their students. But of course, every job requires
Speaker 1: having the right tools. After all, how could an artist
Speaker 1: learn to paint without a canvas, or a potter without clay.
Speaker 1: That same logic had always applied to anatomy. John was
Speaker 1: a visionary, though, who dreamed of reforming medicine, and he
Speaker 1: saw the study of anatomy as key to this. Theories
Speaker 1: and concepts are one thing, but it was better to
Speaker 1: learn from the dead than to make potentially fatal mistakes
Speaker 1: with the living. In death, these bodies could give up
Speaker 1: their secrets. The dead had a lot to teach, after all,
Speaker 1: and John didn't want any opportunities to pass them by.
Speaker 1: He was methodical in his work, and his acute attention
Speaker 1: to detail set him apart from his peers. John was
Speaker 1: working in a dynamic landscape on this internal world that
Speaker 1: felt no different than trying to discover the secrets of
Speaker 1: the stars. In fact, it was probably far more exciting
Speaker 1: back then. Just how methodical was he well, He smelled
Speaker 1: his specimens, even tasted them. He explored the body's dark
Speaker 1: cavities like a passionate spelunker, documenting everything and reporting back
Speaker 1: with his findings. John's approach might have been atypical, but
Speaker 1: the data gathered as a result would prove to be unmatched.
Speaker 1: It was during this time that William facilitated John's employment
Speaker 1: at St. George's Hospital. There, he became a junior surgeon,
Speaker 1: and along with his new title, he received something else,
Speaker 1: keys to the hospital Morgue, where he was now able
Speaker 1: to borrow and practice on new material. For twelve years,
Speaker 1: the brothers worked tirelessly side by side. In time, John
Speaker 1: Starr would even usurp Williams. His affability and dexterity won
Speaker 1: him many fans and followers. By the time he decided
Speaker 1: to strike out on his own, John had become one
Speaker 1: of the most experienced anatomists in all of Europe. He
Speaker 1: was met with a snag though, even though he had
Speaker 1: proven his skill, he lacked a professional degree in surgery
Speaker 1: that would allow him to land a permanent job in
Speaker 1: a hospital setting. Because of this, he took a detour
Speaker 1: and headed to the battlefront, where he became an army surgeon.
Speaker 1: Upon his return, he decided that he would set up
Speaker 1: shop and in his own home. No less, his wife
Speaker 1: and their four children opened their doors to the most
Speaker 1: unfortunate cases. In doing so, John made a name for himself,
Speaker 1: becoming a full fledged appointed surgeon at St. George's Hospital.
Speaker 1: Within a few years he had even become the personal
Speaker 1: surgeon of King George the Third. And it was right
Speaker 1: there in his home office that John did his best work.
Speaker 1: He was surrounded by a morbid menagerie of over fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand specimens preserved as taxidermy and floating in jars. There
Speaker 1: was a kangaroo skull and the remains of the first
Speaker 1: giraffe to be exhibited in Europe, as well as a
Speaker 1: bull from Queen Charlotte. In five, when he was ready
Speaker 1: to expand his operations, he moved to a new house
Speaker 1: at Lester Square. There he hosted distinguished guests and curious
Speaker 1: students alike. The faint smell of death hung in the air,
Speaker 1: ascent that couldn't be undone, despite the flower that John
Speaker 1: kept in the big house To mask it. He had
Speaker 1: created a teaching museum with a front entrance for visitors,
Speaker 1: and as the whispers went a back door for the bodies.
Speaker 1: In the still early morning hours, the resurrection men would
Speaker 1: come knocking. They were a semi bunch, largely independent contractors
Speaker 1: who operated in an underground black market operation to pilfer
Speaker 1: the newly dead from the graveyards. John saw his work
Speaker 1: as a force for good, but that didn't mean that
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to end up on his operating table, especially
Speaker 1: if they hadn't volunteered to do so. His work was necessary, yes,
Speaker 1: but some might also argue that it was dishonorable. He
Speaker 1: was just really good at using the ends to justify
Speaker 1: his means. But as he and his family settled into
Speaker 1: their new home, there would be one particularly controversial specimen
Speaker 1: that John had his designs on procuring, one that would
Speaker 1: cast a dark shadow over his reputation for years to come. Ye.
Speaker 1: Standing at eight ft two inches tall, Charles Byrne was
Speaker 1: the tallest man in the world. His stature gave him
Speaker 1: the markings of a celebrity, and his refined trimmings made
Speaker 1: him a sight to behold. Charles's name splashed big and
Speaker 1: bold in the headlines across Europe. He was gentle and
Speaker 1: elegant and had come to town to entertain anyone who
Speaker 1: would pay for the privilege. When he arrived in London
Speaker 1: in seventeen eighty two, the twenty one year old Irish
Speaker 1: Giants caused quite a stir. There was great curiosity about
Speaker 1: Charles's height, and he was even presented before the Royal
Speaker 1: Society in a game of good natured speculation. One story
Speaker 1: that was told was a legend about his mother. It
Speaker 1: was said that she had a love affair high up
Speaker 1: in a haystack, pointing to the altitude as the cause
Speaker 1: of his great stature. Maternal impression was a convenient and
Speaker 1: common tool to blame the mother for the child's differences,
Speaker 1: and for better or worse, it also made for a
Speaker 1: great story. He was well known across the Irish countryside.
Speaker 1: Some folks saw the potential dollar signs in the attention
Speaker 1: that he received, and by the time he was a
Speaker 1: late teenager, Charles had alighted off on a European tour
Speaker 1: as a traveling showman. As he made his way through
Speaker 1: towns and cities, folks gawkeed at Charles, whether or not
Speaker 1: he was on stage. It was said that the Irish
Speaker 1: giant could light his pipe from the street lamps without
Speaker 1: so much as standing on his tiptoes. He entertained audiences
Speaker 1: all across London, to including an engagement with the King
Speaker 1: and Queen. He toured rooms and halls and taverns, the
Speaker 1: ladder of which would prove to be the beginning of
Speaker 1: his downfall. You see, it was at a public house
Speaker 1: one evening when Charles was pickpocketed, his entire fortune vanishing
Speaker 1: in an instant. When he realized this, Charles was inconsolable.
Speaker 1: His drinking had increased in recent times, and this loss
Speaker 1: made him seek the bottom of the bottle more than ever.
Speaker 1: But although his body was still growing taller, was also
Speaker 1: growing weaker. He contracted about of tuberculosis, and by May
Speaker 1: of seventeen eighty three it was clear that death was
Speaker 1: coming for the Irish Giants. Not all were saddened by this, though,
Speaker 1: We're spurs were circulating in the anatomous circles, with each
Speaker 1: person eager to get their hands on Charles's body. Charles,
Speaker 1: of course knew this, and he was very, very afraid.
Speaker 1: In fact, there was one surgeon in particular who was
Speaker 1: the most eager of them all, the one and only
Speaker 1: John Hunter. Now, according to legend, Charles had already been
Speaker 1: approached by John, who offered to give him money now
Speaker 1: while he was still alive, in exchange for his corpse later.
Speaker 1: Charles was utterly horrified. Of course, he, like many others,
Speaker 1: considered human dissection to be its own kind of indignity,
Speaker 1: better saved for criminals. Charles was also a god fearing man,
Speaker 1: and he believed that he'd be denied a heavenly reception
Speaker 1: on Judgment Day if his physical body was in pieces.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of his encounter with John Hunter, he
Speaker 1: made his friends promise that when he did die, his
Speaker 1: body would be weighed down in the led coffin and
Speaker 1: thrown out to sea. But John Hunter was not to
Speaker 1: be defeated. In fact, he hired a spy and installed
Speaker 1: him in an apartment close to Charles's quarters. This agent
Speaker 1: was instructed to keep John up to date on Charles's
Speaker 1: worsening condition and inform him of any dramatic changes. The
Speaker 1: Irish Giant passed away on June one, three, and the
Speaker 1: newspaper immediately reported it. A mass of hungry anatomists descended
Speaker 1: on Charles's residence like vultures, each one clamoring for his body.
Speaker 1: They offered ransoms and bribes to the undertakers, and went
Speaker 1: so far as to buy their own diving bells, with
Speaker 1: which they intended to raise the giant's leadline coffin from
Speaker 1: its watery depths. But before he was shipped out to
Speaker 1: see he was put on display intact one final time.
Speaker 1: But little did they know that John Hunter was already
Speaker 1: many steps ahead. It's been reported that John hired a
Speaker 1: crooked undertaker to switch out Charles's body for his exact
Speaker 1: weight and paving stones. The undertaker knew Charles's friends, and
Speaker 1: it seems that he had encouraged them to make a
Speaker 1: pit stop at a tavern as they ventured to their
Speaker 1: own waiting ship. They left the body of their deceased
Speaker 1: companion outside in a barn where the undertaker and his
Speaker 1: henchmen made this which and dashed away on paper. The
Speaker 1: body of Charles Byrne was worth the modern equivalent of
Speaker 1: about fifty dollars to John Hunter, but when he finally
Speaker 1: took possession of this corpse, he panicked. In fact, it
Speaker 1: appears that he never even dissected him. It's believed that
Speaker 1: he was so afraid of reprisal from John's friends that
Speaker 1: he quickly dismembered and boiled it, gathered the bones, and
Speaker 1: then reassembled the skeleton. It would be four years before
Speaker 1: he ultimately revealed his secret to the public, hoping that
Speaker 1: that was enough time to have passed, that interest had waned,
Speaker 1: making the public outcry much less severe, and maybe it worked.
Speaker 1: John Hunter's transgression, at least to some degree, had been forgotten,
Speaker 1: along with the last wishes of Charles Byrne. Of course,
Speaker 1: today his skeleton is still on display, having never made
Speaker 1: it to his final resting place. It's easy to believe
Speaker 1: the exploitation of Charles Byrne was all in vain, and
Speaker 1: in a way it was John got what he wanted,
Speaker 1: Charles's body and the opportunity to learn what made that
Speaker 1: body so different what it was that caused him to
Speaker 1: never stop growing? And if there was anyone who was
Speaker 1: going to be capable of cracking this mysterious coat, it
Speaker 1: would have been John Hunter. After all, his work had
Speaker 1: led to an explosion in knowledge about the body, everything
Speaker 1: from bone growth, inflammation, and venereal diseases to the lymphatic system,
Speaker 1: child development, and dentistry. If Charles's body had to fall
Speaker 1: into the clutches of someone's hands, John's were at least
Speaker 1: very capable. But nerves got the better of him. John
Speaker 1: squandered the opportunity to advance medical science. However ill gotten
Speaker 1: the gains may have been. It would be another century
Speaker 1: before a defect in the pituitary gland would be pinpointed
Speaker 1: as the cause for gigantism. John didn't slow down, though,
Speaker 1: he worked hard and continued to have a career after
Speaker 1: this unseemly chapter. He advanced through the ranks, eventually becoming
Speaker 1: the Surgeon General in sev He died three years later
Speaker 1: of a heart attack, and in keeping with his own
Speaker 1: pro actuses, John Hunter donated his body for autopsy. Almost
Speaker 1: two centuries later, in nineteen seventy two, twenty year old
Speaker 1: Brendan Holland traveled from his home in Ireland to St
Speaker 1: Bartholomew's Hospital in London. He was almost seven feet tall
Speaker 1: and still growing. After having his pituitary gland radiated, that
Speaker 1: growth stopped. In two thousand nine, a leading experts on
Speaker 1: growth hormone conditions came upon something really interesting. She had
Speaker 1: been working with Charles Burns and Brendan Holland's DNA and
Speaker 1: was able to identify a rogue gene mutation. Come to
Speaker 1: find out, it's thought that both men shared a common
Speaker 1: ancestor as far back as fifteen hundred years ago. Distant
Speaker 1: cousins spread across centuries and united by microscopic programming that
Speaker 1: shaped the stories of their lives. Our long and winding
Speaker 1: history with the human body has given us plenty to
Speaker 1: think about all these years later. From the battle to
Speaker 1: make dissection acceptable to the ethical struggles around how to
Speaker 1: use it, we've done our best to navigate quite the
Speaker 1: bumpy road, and that challenge has never gone away. In fact,
Speaker 1: we have one more story to share with you about
Speaker 1: that ever evolving field. Stick around through this brief sponsor
Speaker 1: break to hear all about it. Right. Dr William M.
Speaker 1: Bass was no stranger to the dead. As a forensic anthropologist,
Speaker 1: he was a combination of an archaeologist and a detective
Speaker 1: who specialized in reading bones. So when Dr Bass was
Speaker 1: called to do some sleuthing on some remains found in
Speaker 1: a shallow grave, he was prepared to perhaps find a
Speaker 1: freshly laid murder victim. But this, as it would turn out,
Speaker 1: but proved to be no ordinary case. The grave had
Speaker 1: been dug a few feet down and in it was
Speaker 1: a headless body atop a coffin. Dr Bass knew that
Speaker 1: this particular coffin belonged to a Confederate soldier by the
Speaker 1: name of Colonel William Shy. But as to how this
Speaker 1: second person got here, well, that's what Dr Bass needed
Speaker 1: to solve. He saw that the headless body still had
Speaker 1: pink skin, and it had really no signs of extensive decomposition.
Speaker 1: So the corpse was removed and sent to his lab
Speaker 1: for further investigation, but Doctor Bass stayed behind. He continued
Speaker 1: to poke around the scene and saw that the colonel's
Speaker 1: coffin had a foot wide hole in it, and upon
Speaker 1: looking into his box, Doctor Bass found exactly what he
Speaker 1: was expecting. Nothing. He knew that after more than a
Speaker 1: hundred years in the muggy Tennessee heat, a body would
Speaker 1: have disintegrated completely. Doctor Bass presumed that the hole in
Speaker 1: the coffin had been made by a murderer who figured, well,
Speaker 1: they might as well take a look around while they
Speaker 1: were burying their victim. But back at the lab, the
Speaker 1: mystery was deepening. The lab had deduced that the body
Speaker 1: belonged to a white man in his mid twenties, and
Speaker 1: he appeared to have been dead for a little bit
Speaker 1: less than a year. But his suit was somewhat tattered
Speaker 1: and it had some very odd detail and lacing. This
Speaker 1: gave Dr Bass an idea, so he went back to
Speaker 1: the colonel's grave. Further inspection helped him locate a skull
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the coffin, one with a very
Speaker 1: obvious bullet hole, and one that very much seemed to
Speaker 1: match the recovered body. And that's when the true story
Speaker 1: snapped into place. It seems that, despite all odds, Colonel
Speaker 1: William Shy was this headless mystery man. But the question remained.
Speaker 1: How the investigators determined that Colonel Shy, being from a
Speaker 1: wealthy family, had been embombed, and when he was sealed
Speaker 1: in his cast iron coffin. It arrested his decomposition, and
Speaker 1: he stayed relatively fresh, And it was only recently that
Speaker 1: his grave had been disturbed, not by a killer covering
Speaker 1: their tracks, but by contemporary grave robbers. Dr Bass knew
Speaker 1: right away that this case was striking. It also solidified
Speaker 1: something that he had long been thinking about. There was
Speaker 1: just so much that we did not know about human decomposition,
Speaker 1: so he set out to rectify that. In nine eight,
Speaker 1: he created what is now known as the Body Farm,
Speaker 1: situated near the University of Tennessee Medical Center. The Body
Speaker 1: Farm is a three acre tract of land surrounded by
Speaker 1: fencing and barbed wire. Here Dr Bass and his team
Speaker 1: have created various microclimates shallow graves, car trunks, tree shade,
Speaker 1: and ponds. They may wrap bodies and rugs or encase
Speaker 1: them in concrete. These various situations create different paces of decomposition,
Speaker 1: all of which are then meticulously studied. Since the farm's inception,
Speaker 1: Dr Bass and his team have brought in thousands of cadavers.
Speaker 1: The bodies arrive at the farm in one of three ways.
Speaker 1: They're donated by the now deceased individual, donated by the family,
Speaker 1: or if unclaimed donated by the State Medical Examiner. The
Speaker 1: Body Farm is at the forefront of helping forensic anthropologists,
Speaker 1: medical examiners, and crime scene investigators develop sophisticated ways to
Speaker 1: understand how a body's deteriorated state has come to be,
Speaker 1: especially when we're asking the questions about when, how, who,
Speaker 1: and maybe even we can attribute a lot of what
Speaker 1: we know to Dr Bass and his work. Even still,
Speaker 1: the work has its attractors, and more countries work towards
Speaker 1: opening their own human decomposition research facilities, they're being met
Speaker 1: with pushback. Neighbors worry about pests and scavenging animals, and
Speaker 1: generally might feel a little bit uncomfortable by the prospect
Speaker 1: of potentially catching a glimpse of their new neighbors. It's
Speaker 1: a tale as old as time, though studying other animals
Speaker 1: just can't come close enough to mimicking human tissues to
Speaker 1: give us the knowledge that we need. It's a really
Speaker 1: tricky subject. It's really hard for us to think about
Speaker 1: what happens to our bodies after we die, and we
Speaker 1: certainly don't want to think about them being left out
Speaker 1: in the sun, left for scavenging animals, or what other
Speaker 1: things might come of us. Even still, it's probably worth
Speaker 1: reflecting on our own general I when it comes to
Speaker 1: thinking about all of these things, and seriously considering whether
Speaker 1: or not our own eventual deaths and whatever might come
Speaker 1: of our body could possibly hold the key to someone
Speaker 1: else is life. Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was
Speaker 1: executive produced by Aaron Manky and narrated by Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: and Robin Minater. Writing for this season was provided by
Speaker 1: Robin Miniter, with research by Sam Alberty, Taylor haggerd Orn
Speaker 1: and Robin Minater. Production assistance was provided by Josh Thane,
Speaker 1: Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about this show, the Grim and Mild team, and
Speaker 1: all the other podcasts that we make over at Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild dot com, and, as always, thanks for listening.