28th March 2020
Death. I’m reading a totally inappropriate book given the environment but I have been fascinated by the morbid and weird for many years. I’m sure it probably isn’t healthy! I took my baby during maternity leave around The Surgeon’s museum and Barts Pathology hospital to look at preserved body parts and deformities that had been perceived as bizarre enough to embalm. Now I explain it I realise that it’s not a healthy hobby!
However I have finished a book called Post Mortems which is about post mortem examinations. It was a fascinating book covering many inter-related areas. I understand death is a difficult topic – particularly in this time of Covid, but it is a topic we need to be open to accepting discussion around because it is a natural part of life and we need to learn to cope with it.
The book was a treasure trove of information. I never knew that here in the UK, Coroners do not actually carry out autopsies, they authorise. It is the Pathologist who physically does so. The author explains about the different stages for a body to decay from rigor mortis to lividity (staining of the skin); cooling to autolysis (self digestion by free enzymes roaming the body) to bloat (microbes going on a bender) to putrefaction to decay (maggots) to dry. Absolutely incredible how the body disintegrates once the core organs stop their normal functions.
She had a fascinating story about Madam Tussaud’s. The venue here in London was set up by a woman called Marie Tussaud who escaped the French guillotine and was employed to collect the heads and make plaster casts of them so the general public would know what aristocracy looked like. She subsequently used these heads and the technique to make wax models which we are now familiar with. Gory beginnings.
Curiosity and the rascal 