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Cadavers: Where do they come from?

Anyone watching Brothers and Sisters last Sunday saw Justin Walker getting ready to cut open a cadaver as part of his medical school training. Where did that cadaver come from? How did it get to a medical school?

A brief history of cadavers

Medical schools have used cadavers for training for more than 200 years. Over this period of time, the methods of acquiring and preserving them have changed. Criminals who were executed for their crimes were used as the first cadavers since Christians believed that the souls of dissected bodies could not go to heaven and few offered their bodies to science. As the number of criminals being executed decreased, it became commonplace to steal bodies from graves in order to keep the market supplied.

The tradition of dissecting criminals continued into the eighteenth and nineteenth century when anatomy schools became popular in England and Scotland. The only cadavers available were criminals’, and anatomists were portrayed as no better than an executioner.
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World Alzheimer’s Day

World Alzheimer’s Day, September 21, is a day when the Alzheimer’s Association and other organizations around the globe unite our efforts to raise awareness about the disease and its impact on our families, communities and nations.
Recent research indicates 33 million people worldwide are dealing with dementia, incluing 4.4 million Americans.    Alzheimer’s continues to be a disease without a cure.

With 77 million American baby boomers reaching the age of greatest risk, the crisis of dementia and Alzheimer’s cannot be ignored.  The disease imposes enormous burden on individuals, families, health care infrastructure and the worldwide economy.

It makes planning for incapacity as important as planning for death.