The article, “The beauty of Bodysnatching”, By Druin Burch is a piece that brings to stage questions of morality, and furthermore the implications of one’s ability to transcend societies limitations. Burch begins the article by introducing different anatomists all practicing in the same period of time, each of whom found their own unique way of coping with the controversy that came along with practicing surgery in the 1800’s. Burch centers his article around one anatomist in particular who had a great many differences from the other surgeons spoken of, both in his practice and in his way of looking at anatomy, this anatomist was Astley Cooper.
In a time when desecration of the dead would be greatly taboo, Astley Cooper found a view of the world that allowed him to overcome the limitations that bridled most surgeons of the time. Cooper started small but eventually worked up to a network of body snatchers which allowed him to dissect and study human anatomy in varying states of decomposition. Cooper took alternative routes to achieve as much as he did, most of those being highly frowned upon, but as a ramification of this, he was able to take the scientific freedom this allowed him, and make discoveries that are still respected and used today. Even today surgery isn’t easy, but in the 1800’s it was a lot more than just difficult. It was a brutal and …show more content…
In Burch’s writing he doesn’t hesitate to show how Cooper’s discoveries and contributions to what we now know about the human anatomy were so incredibly important and how much they were able to teach surgeons, both of the present and past and gives no doubt that Cooper was a brilliant anatomist, but he leaves it in the minds of the reader to decide whether or not his brilliance made up his lack of
In a time when desecration of the dead would be greatly taboo, Astley Cooper found a view of the world that allowed him to overcome the limitations that bridled most surgeons of the time. Cooper started small but eventually worked up to a network of body snatchers which allowed him to dissect and study human anatomy in varying states of decomposition. Cooper took alternative routes to achieve as much as he did, most of those being highly frowned upon, but as a ramification of this, he was able to take the scientific freedom this allowed him, and make discoveries that are still respected and used today. Even today surgery isn’t easy, but in the 1800’s it was a lot more than just difficult. It was a brutal and …show more content…
In Burch’s writing he doesn’t hesitate to show how Cooper’s discoveries and contributions to what we now know about the human anatomy were so incredibly important and how much they were able to teach surgeons, both of the present and past and gives no doubt that Cooper was a brilliant anatomist, but he leaves it in the minds of the reader to decide whether or not his brilliance made up his lack of