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[MagmaMcFry]

Religious concerns have the unfortunate tendency to never take a backseat.

[Mech#4]

Do any medical students or practitioners have a good explanation for why human dissection and vivisection was stigmatized for so long? I know our historical knowledge here is not complete, but one would think in any era they yielded obvious advantages, to the point where religious concerns would and have taken a backseat.

I am no medical practitioner but I can be pretty sure with giving the reason that "Since the human body is a creation of God, it is therefore sacred and we have no right defiling the bodies of those that have passed on". This was still mostly true during the enlightenment period, and to get around it (or rather, to be sneaky) I believe medical practitioners made agreements with mortuaries.

[Lectorog]

Even without religion, people aren't okay with cutting open other people. It just doesn't feel right to most, even if they're dead.

[Scoops Novel]

The Egyptians managed to work it into their religion, and i wouldn't be surprised if the Aztecs had. Why not more?

[Mech#4]

The Egyptians managed to work it into their religion, and i wouldn't be surprised if the Aztecs had. Why not more?

Different beliefs. For the Egyptians, embalming their dead was, I believe, a way to preserve the body for the afterlife along with their Kah (I think that's it, the persons spirit anyway). Whether the Egyptians had a good knowledge of human anatomy, well, I would assume they did (I mean mostly a knowledge of what bits are where, not so much which bit does what), but there was an annoying situation where the great library of Alexandria burned down along with a lot of scrolls of knowledge.

I don't know about the Aztecs, maybe? I don't think they were in the habit of recording knowledge on paper to that degree, though I'm sure they had doctors they might've been more like what you'd see in the Indian tribes further north. I really don't know about it that much though.

[Descan]

The ironic thing is, the Egyptians believed that the body was a vessel for the soul even after death. Destroy the body, destroy the soul, or at least make it a homeless wanderer. I would think a religion like that would be even MORE against dissection than a religion where the body is a creation of god, but doesn't actually hold a soul after death. It'd be like destroying a home someone is still living in, versus destroying an abandoned but historical significant building.

Vivisection is upon a still-living body, by the way. You can see how from the word revive, to bring back to life. Vivisection, living cut.

[Helgoland]

Did any slave-owner societies perform vivisections? Aztecs don't count

[wierd]

I thought its root word was [viv, vita, vivi-- derivative of vivo, which means life, or alive.

Similar words: Vitamins, victuals, vitality.


The dissection of live humans for study has been severely frowned upon by nearly all cultures.  There is a reason why reproduction and birth were celebrated by the ancient world. Life was hard, child mortality was high, and maintaining a society was very difficult. Wasting even the lives of slaves in this capacity was very base.

[10ebbor10]

Well, they believed only the heart was important. (Other organs were also important, but way less. Brain was dog food). And well, they kinda go rotting if you leave too much inside.

On a side note, dissections happened quite often in the Late Middle ages, to the point where Execution shedules were usually adjusted to match. Considering these were criminals already, desecration was no problem.

[Descan]

I thought its root word was [viv, vita, vivi-- derivative of vivo, which means life, or alive.

Similar words: Vitamins, victuals, vitality.

That was my point, actually. Same root words, I just didn't know what the root word actually was, so I had to do it round-about.

[wierd]

Indeed. It was considered a 'good' thing to prevent "wicked people" from being able to be raised from the dead on the lord's return. (Same reason why witches were burned. The resulting ashes would scatter, leaving no corpse. at least in theory. Nevermind how outrageously heretical that idea is in the face of a supposedly omnipotent god, who is purposefully raising the dead.) Isnt superstition lovely?

Another consideration for why bodies were not dissected, and diseases rigorously studied as mechanical phenomena with physical causes, was because disease was seen as an invisible, and thus, supernatural phenomenon.  All dissecting a hunchback would give you is a mangled corpse of a deformed man, since the cause of the deformity was a curse from god.

"Spontaneous generation" was still widely held as a belief even up into the 1600s, well after science started taking deep roots in western culture. Practically dogmatically so in fact.

[Mech#4]

The ironic thing is, the Egyptians believed that the body was a vessel for the soul even after death. Destroy the body, destroy the soul, or at least make it a homeless wanderer. I would think a religion like that would be even MORE against dissection than a religion where the body is a creation of god, but doesn't actually hold a soul after death. It'd be like destroying a home someone is still living in, versus destroying an abandoned but historical significant building.

Vivisection is upon a still-living body, by the way. You can see how from the word revive, to bring back to life. Vivisection, living cut.

Possibly they were against examining bodies for any reason not belonging to mummification, though since mummification I think took place under the eyes of priests, was a lengthy process involving many small rituals and so on and so forth they made damn sure they'd do a good job so the persons spirit survives. Baring any instances of people not putting much effort in for a disliked ruler.

[ed boy]

Even without religion, people aren't okay with cutting open other people. It just doesn't feel right to most, even if they're dead.

I would argue that that is due to religion being around for so long and being so important for so long that it imprints its values on the rest of culture.

[MonkeyHead]

Does hanging, drawing and quartering count?

[Furtuka]

helping a cousin with one of those brain teasers with the word things in boxes and you have to figure out words or phrases from them. I can't seem to figure out

  d
  u c
     k

and

  pit


They're arranged exactly like that