Cadaver Crisis

In the midst of the greatest human slaughter in history, there is a serious shortage of corpses: the bodies of battle victims are not available to medical schools. This wartime shortage is a serious handicap to medical students who, to learn their business properly, should dissect at least half of a human body. Nowadays, a student may get only a quarter of a corpse to himself, often has to watch another dissect.

Last week the cadaver crisis was viewed with alarm by experts on both sides of the Atlantic: Dr. Neville Goodman of London, Anatomist Melvin Knisely of the University of Chicago, Dr. Howard Curl of the University of Tennessee. The shortage is even worse in Britain than in the U.S.; British students have been cut down from a prewar standard of 16 students per body to an average of 20 students. The most serious shortage, both in Britain and the U.S., is of female bodies (especially young ones), important for the training of obstetricians and gynecologists. At best, only about one in 20 of the available corpses is that of a female.

The cadaver scarcity was growing acute even before the war. For dissection, modern medical schools have to depend almost entirely on derelict, unclaimed bodies. Wartime prosperity, a long-range decline in pauperism and the wider spread of Social Security payments (which include funeral expenses) have cut this source of supply. Said Dr. Curl last week: "Another four years and we may not have any cadavers for medical teaching."

Blackest Market. Perhaps by way of warning, Dr. Goodman darkly reviews in the British Medical Journal the long history of dissection, which got its start on the bodies of criminals and engendered the blackest of black markets--the traffic in corpses. By the 18th Century there was a flourishing body-snatching industry in England and America. At standard prices (which in England rose gradually from -L-2 to -L-14) these businessmen guaranteed to deliver to a medical school any given body, sometimes snatching a corpse almost from under its mourners' noses. From grave-robbing, dealers in cadavers took to replenishing their supplies by murder. This form of service to medical science was called Burking, after an enterprising Scot who invented it. He was eventually caught, hanged and himself dissected.

Thanks to Burking, which got the public dander up more than simple grave-robbing had done, laws were passed in the 18305, allowing doctors to dissect unclaimed bodies. Today British and U.S. laws provide for such dissection under certain strict rules: e.g., after dissection, a medical school must give the remains a decent, religious burial.

Medical men delicately suggest that public education and perhaps new legislation is needed. Except in a few states, a citizen who would like to leave his body to science now has no real power to enforce his wish. A body cannot legally be willed; its disposal is up to relatives. In Britain, courts usually give the next-of-kin his way; in the U.S., courts often respect the deceased's wishes. Best a man can do is leave a note that he wants a medical school to have his body, hope that no sentimental relative will object when the time comes.

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