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Why Was Benjamin Franklin’s Basement Filled with Skeletons? (2013)
- bredren 6y ago“The most plausible explanation is not mass murder, but an anatomy school run by Benjamin Franklin’s young friend and protege, William Hewson”
- tricky 6y agothank you for saving me a click!
- INTPenis 6y agoAnd of course a complete disregard for human remains at the time. Nothing surprising.
- duxup 6y agoI suppose if it is illegal there's little room for actual regard for human remains.
- echelon 6y agoIf we hadn't broken the rules to study anatomy, we wouldn't have modern medicine. Scientific advances are often made by pushing past the qualms of present cultural mores.
- INTPenis 6y agoYes, that was the opinion of Dr. Mengele. Ok I added that to be colorful, I understand your point. But at the time there was also a disregard for the human remains of poor and unknown people. Their bodies were often used, and sometimes exhumed, for medical research. This research could have been concluded with a proper burial, but instead they were simply thrown into a basement.
- wowMyFriend 6y agoWow, you're really coming across as such a magnanimous individual. We should thank our lucky stars that we have a solemn protector like you watching over us. It feels incredible to be able to say: INTPenis is saving us from wrongthink.
- Nasrudith 6y agoMengele was a doubly bad example for scientific ethics because the cruelties he committed weren't even remotely scientific. Bad ethics can lead one astray to that nonsense. There is no quandry there when there isn't anything to gain through depravity. Compare that to the quandry of resurrectionists and doctors - a noble goal and duty to save lives, when the principles are already that life is more important than property. As far back as even Dante Alighieri smashing a baptismal font to rescue a boy from drowning. Such ghoulish behavior fully fit in with the underlying ethics as righteous even if society found it abhorrent. The basement approach seems to be an unfortunate side effect of the illegality - disposal via even improper burials doubles the risk of being caught. Let alone transporting a coffin "from nowhere" with a skeleton, especially if it was to return where the bodies were "borrowed" from.
- leoc 6y agoMengele got all the publicity while the Max Planck (née Kaiser Wilhelm) Society kept its head down and quietly held on to all of the people's brains it harvested from T4. https://www.thelocal.de/20170503/german-scientists-to-identify-nazi-disabled-victim-remains https://www.thelocal.de/20170503/german-scientists-to-identi...
- tartoran 6y agoI got an intact model skeleton once, somebody was giving it away when leaving their studio. When I picked it up I had no idea it was real, shoved it into a plastic bag and took it home. At home I was astounded at how well it was made. It looked like real bone, it had the same porosity and detail as bone. Opened up a browser and got pointed to a label on the cranium which certified it as authentic human skeleton. Forgot the details but that was a real skeleton. They were imported before the 50s-60s from Asia, probably India. Meanwhile they became somewhat illegal to trade, I found. Actually shipping human bones became illegal. On ebay they were posted for around $5000. Scary. It’s sad that someones remains are subjects of commerce. I took it to a police precinct, they said they’d send it to a crematorium.
- f0ok 6y agoYou're right, and it brings controversy. Many times discoveries were made because of unethical approaches: they save time, resources, and debates. But sometimes there can be a moral price to pay.
- leoc 6y agoNo kidding. https://www.thelocal.de/20170503/german-scientists-to-identify-nazi-disabled-victim-remains https://www.thelocal.de/20170503/german-scientists-to-identi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/02/guatemala.html http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/02/guatemala.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
- ajhurliman 6y agoThe difference here, which I think is a major one, is that the examples you've listed disregard the wellbeing of humans who are alive. Benjamin Franklin may have disrespected the remains of humans (or maybe he didn't, there's no conclusive evidence here on the dying wishes of those folks in his backyard), but those remains are objects and not humans.
- ASalazarMX 6y agoI'd advocate for a complete disregard of human remains today, because death is supposed to be benefit for the environment. Just reuse the organs that are in good shape, then grind and compost the corpses.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoI mean, speaking purely objectively, you're probably right, instead of locking the dead away in concrete and wooden boxes, but that's gonna be fun to try and normalize. Maybe we could cute it up? Add the funeral equivalent of the ring bearer to turn on the mulcher for grandma?
- saalweachter 6y agoJust think of it as carbon sequestration.
- smabie 6y agoHow about sky burial?
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoAre you referring to letting the birds eat you, or being fired out of a cannon?
- c22 6y agoOr dropped from orbit and cremated on re-entry?
- Nasrudith 6y agoComposting carries risks - generally we don't want anything "eating" human flesh. Scavengers or bacteria as it breeds more virulent pestilence and possibly man eaters. Cremation while a bit ghastly and requiring fuel accomplishes the task the best. But the environment is always a nuanced priority - like deep landfills vs surface dumping of any given substance.
- trianglem 6y agoWho cares about a dead body? In my opinion all dead bodies should be made available to scientific research or anything else after the funeral and final rites are done.
- borski 6y agoEvidently, a lot of people care about a dead body, whether for grieving or religious reasons. Your opinion is not the only valid opinion.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoOh god, who cares about a dead body? Try asking me that if any of my family died, or asking any of my family if I died. The body is all that's left. Irrational or not, maybe that's one of the most beautiful things about people. That intense salience that comes from loss, love, compassion, and longing.
- nscalf 6y agoTo note, it was illegal at the time, which is why it would be in his basement instead of in a lab.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI was hoping they found hundreds of pages with the sentence "Early to Bed and Early to Rise Makes Poor Richard a Dull Boy" repeated on them.
- yters 6y agoBoth explanations can be true at the same time.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoHey Benjamin, I need a new body :)
- leoc 6y agoIndeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders
- vivekd 6y agoAs unlikely as it may seem at first I lean towards the more sinister explanation. Why were almost half these bodies children. Wouldn't it have been more difficult to obtain child cadavers than adult ones. And I wonder how child cadavers would have benefitted Hewsons research. In fact how would anything to do with Hewsons research, focused primarily on blood, have benefitted from cadavers
- irrational 6y ago> hiw would anything yo donwith What?
- Mirioron 6y ago>On fact hiw would anything yo donwith Hewsons research, focused primarily on blood, have benefitted from cadavers In fact, how would anything to do with Hewson's research, focused primarily on blood, have benefited from cadavers?
- Someone 6y agoI guess the fact that a large fraction of the available corpses were corpses of children was a factor in that. Child mortality was extremely high up to around 1900. https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality: “What is striking about the historical estimates is how similar the mortality rates for children were across this very wide range of 43 historical cultures. Whether in Ancient Rome; Ancient Greece; the pre-Columbian Americas; Medieval Japan or Medieval England; the European Renaissance; or Imperial China: Every fourth newborn died in the first year of life. One out of two died in childhood” It also may have been more practical to steal easier to haul corpses.
- gitpusher 6y agoAh, the life of an early adopter!
- cpr 6y agoYeah, or maybe his Hellfire Club membership was more than just pagan rituals... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Club
- iamben 6y agoSort of on topic, the Hellfire Caves are really quite something, if you get a chance to visit them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Caves https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Caves 400m deep, dug by hand, to use the chalk for the road between Wycombe and West Wycombe. Quite the feat of engineering. Wonderfully creepy inside as well.
- dmix 6y agoJust to be clear this was his house in London, UK. Not one in Philadelphia. https://www.google.com/maps/place/36+Craven+St,+Charing+Cross,+London+WC2N+5NF,+UK/@51.5076423,-0.1270809,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x487604cee7c6e4b3:0x66452e2e55d6fb80!8m2!3d51.5076423!4d-0.1248869 https://www.google.com/maps/place/36+Craven+St,+Charing+Cros... William Hewson was a British anatomist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hewson_(surgeon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hewson_(surgeon)
- oblib 6y agoBecause his closet was full. (I'm sorry. I just couldn't help it :)