An assumption has long existed that 19th century doctors interested in dissection prized male cadavers over female, due to the greater average musculature in men's bodies. A new analysis by two archaeologists, however, suggests that women and men may have been more equal in this postmortem practice than anyone realized.
Human dissection began as a way to acquire medical knowledge about anatomy. In early 16th century England, when the practice of Western medicine began to take off in earnest, hanged felons were allowed by King Henry VIII to be dissected. This precedent established a tradition of dissecting men, as those condemned to death were almost exclusively male. By the mid-18th century, the 1752 Murder Act further sanctioned dissection as a form of eternal punishment, but was reserved for murderers; women were rarely convicted of this crime and almost never sentenced to death. Given the legal system of historic England, it is unsurprising that the dissection of female cadavers was limited.
Archaeologists have recently begun investigating the history of this postmortem medical practice by excavating hospital cemeteries and analyzing the skeletal remains. In both the US and the UK, archaeologists have found that the bodies of men were dissected two or three times as often as those of women. While the gender disparity in life is in many ways unsurprising, a new study asks whether women and men were treated differently after death.
Jenna Dittmar and Piers Mitchell, researchers with the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, detail their analysis of historical dissections in a new article in the journal Bioarchaeology International. In order to investigate the “startling gender disparity” in dissected bodies, Dittmar and Mitchell studied 99 skeletons - 74 male and 25 female - dating to the second half of the 19th century from the Royal London Hospital and the University of Cambridge. Each skeleton was confirmed to have tool marks on the bones from the process of dissection.
In order to systematically assess the dissection procedures used on each body, Dittmar and Mitchell precisely recorded each tool mark and compared the patterns with historical descriptions of human dissection and surgery.
The researchers discovered several intriguing patterns in the remains. Many skulls had been sawed open “with a type of surgical saw that had teeth that were organized at opposing angles, with alternating teeth angled away from the midline,” and the cuts commenced on the left side. Knife marks elsewhere “appear to have been created by a straight, single-bladed instrument with no evidence of serrated edges.” Even the face was dissected, including the eyes. “In addition, three men and three women had their heads removed by sawing through the cervical vertebrae,” Dittmar and Mitchell note.
In looking at potential gender differences in the treatment of the cadaver, though, the researchers found none. “In both men and women, evidence of a craniotomy was the most commonly identified postmortem surgical procedure,” they report. “There is also evidence that certain facial features (eyes, ears, mouth) were sometimes examined more extensively on both men and women, often resulting in substantial fragmentation and disfiguration of the corpse.” Dittmar and Mitchell did assess evidence of cut marks in the chest cavity; however, they conclude that, because internal organs could have been accessed via the diaphragm, there were few obvious tool marks on any skeleton.
University of South Carolina bioarchaeologist Carlina de la Cova agrees with the findings of Dittmar and Mitchell, noting that their results are consistent with other anatomical collections that have a higher number of males than females. De la Cova suggests that one reason for this longstanding gender disparity may be due to socioeconomic status, as “indigent, unclaimed women were not dissected at the same rates as males. Low socioeconomic status males – wage laborers, the homeless, or those living in boarding houses – may have been transient, without local family ties, resulting in their bodies not being claimed at death.”
Some skeletons, however, showed evidence of amputated limbs and sectioning after death. Dittmar and Mitchell explain this as a process of “cadaver sharing” in a time when bodies were few and far between. Further, though, the researchers suggest that “the evidence of cadaver sharing on female skeletal remains provides convincing support for equitable treatment of the bodies of the dissected.” That is, women were not treated differently in dissection; they were no longer viewed as vulnerable or in need of protection. “By dividing the body into parts, educators and anatomists created a situation in which sections of the body could be divorced from their antemortem gendered identities,” they note.
De la Cova agrees that the severing of limbs and heads postmortem could be related to a distancing of the anatomists from their human subjects. “This attitude,” she tells me, “is probably why few differences exist in regard to the ways in which males and females were anatomized in Dittmar and Mitchell’s sample.” Based on the language anatomists used during this time period, they would have viewed both sexes as little more than specimens, a dehumanization that she says “eases the anatomist into cutting, severing, disemboweling, and dismembering the human body for detailed dissection,” according to de la Cova.
Some differences in dissection did occur, and de la Cova points to a desire of anatomists in the 18th century to dissect pregnant women. However, “the main difference between dissection of men and women,” Dittmar and Mitchell found in historical records, “was the examination of the sexual organs, which leaves no evidence on the skeletal remains.”
Dittmar and Mitchell’s examination of dissected female bodies therefore shows that “within the specific confines of the dissection room, the inequality of the sexes experience during life ended in death. Women were not given any special treatment by their dissectors, who were almost certainly exclusively male.”
Rebecca Gibson, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Notre Dame, sums up the research study succinctly by concluding that it “demonstrates that we need to question our assumption about the practice of dissection, bring in historical data, and do proper biocultural analyses of the skeletons to truly see the whole picture” the way that Dittmar and Mitchell do.
