Bones in the basement
Subtitle: postmortem racism in nineteenth-century medical training
By: edited by Robert L. Blakely and Judith M. Harrington.
Contributors: Blakely, Robert L.; Harrington, Judith M.
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Washington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 380
Subjects: Medical college of Georgia.; Medical College of Georgia.; Human dissection -- Georgia -- History -- 19th century.; Body snatching -- Georgia.; Paleopathology -- Georgia.; African Americans -- Georgia -- History -- 19th century.; Dissection -- history -- Georgia.; History of Medicine, 19th Cent. -- Georgia.; Anthropology, Physical -- Georgia.; Blacks -- history -- Georgia.
Description: Dissection was the preferred teaching method in nineteenth-century American medical schools even though, until the final decades of the century, the practice was illegal in most states. In 1989, a cache of some 9800 dissected and amputated human bones--more than 75% of them African American--were found in the earthen basement floor of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. The authors argue that the procurement of cadavers by American medical schools was part of a racist system that viewed African Americans as expendable not only in life but also after death. They also shed light on the importance of surgical training at a time when amputation was the primary means of treatment, and examine the evidence of diet and disease in a nineteenth-century urban black population.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.