corpse

corpse — the body after the moment of death, but prior to the completion of decomposition; also known (particularly in the US) by the Latin term cadaver.

In most circumstances, this residue of humanity is regarded as due for disposal. Concern for the future life of the soul or spirit is often reflected in the treatment of the corpse. In all cultures, the corpse is an object of great potency, the focus for a powerful mixture of solicitude and fear: solicitude for the humanity and personality of the dead, embodied in the transformed body of the dead person; horror of death, dread of bereavement, or terror of the likelihood of further deaths or of haunting.

These lay perceptions have medical parallels. The poet Shelley's corpse was burnt on the beach near Viareggio when it was washed up there after his drowning in 1822, as the Tuscan authorities of the day regarded drowned bodies as a health hazard. In nineteenth-century Britain, corpses were classified as ‘nuisances’ to public health, and sanitary inspectors were authorized to remove them from the homes of the poor for fear that they might serve as foci for epidemics of scarlet fever, cholera, or smallpox.

Medical solicitude for the corpse derives from its potential value for postmortem diagnosis, dissection, specimen-taking, and transplantation, and depends crucially on its physical condition. Freshness is a key attribute: significant findings at autopsy and the success of transplanted organs and tissues depend upon it, and there is little point in dissecting a body whose structures have badly decomposed prior to preservation, except for forensic or anthropological purposes. Although anatomical dissection may be carried out ultimately on body parts, effective injection and saturation of tissues with preservative requires that corpses be undamaged at the outset. Wholeness is less crucial to transplantation, as organs or tissues from even damaged corpses can be saved for transplant, if saved quickly. For both dissection and transplantation, the cause of death must be known and the corpse ascertainably free from certain transmissible diseases.

Patient organizations such as the Parkinson's Disease Society and the Alzheimer's Disease Society run specialized brain banks, to which sufferers bequeath their remains for research.

The traditional importance of the corpse to medicine is currently being eroded by technological advances. New imaging technologies enable students to explore bodily structures without dissecting, while pathological studies can often be made on tissue located and biopsied in the living patient.

In transplantation, the advantages of using organs from living bodies and the shortage of human ‘beating-heart donors’ are causing surgeons to seek material from animals. The adequacy, safety, and ethical acceptability of this alternative are as yet uncertain. It seems likely that in time the human corpse will undergo a further process of revaluation.

Ruth Richardson

See also anatomy; autopsy; biopsy; body snatchers; brain death; death; dissection; funeral practices; transplantation.