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Learning from the dead — a dying art

By Joe Pellicer | For The Olympian • Published March 16, 2009

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During a brief break in a busy shift, I was chatting with one of my partners about the tragic case of a young man whom he had seen the previous week.

He described the man's brief, intense illness and how he had been puzzled by the combination of symptoms. Shortly after being admitted to the hospital, the man died. He was younger than me.

My immediate reaction was: Did they do an autopsy? My partner answered me: Of course not. They never do them anymore.

We reminisced on the unfortunate demise of this once-common procedure.

In an autopsy (which translates, roughly, to look for oneself), a dead body is surgically opened and the organs are removed for study in the hopes doctors can understand what caused the person's death.

Once common, they rarely are performed anymore for a variety of reasons.

The procedure has a strange history in the annals of medicine. There are records of the Greeks and Phoenicians dabbling with the procedure. For about the next 1,500 years, most cultures had strong legal and religious proscriptions against violating the dead body.

The Renaissance brought about a reversal of this primitive attitude, and by the 16th century, physicians (as well as artists) began to peer into the wonders of the human body.

It wasn't until the heady days of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that medical knowledge caught up with the willingness to look into a cadaver.

With the ability to not only see, but to understand the body on a microscopic scale, the power of the autopsy to teach us about illness became apparent.

The autopsy became not only routine, but it was a celebrated aspect of medical education. It was clear to physicians that they could do a better job of saving lives with a better understanding of what destroyed them.

As late as the mid-20th century, the autopsy was the norm if anyone died young or unexpectedly. It was not uncommon for half of the deceased to be examined.

General practitioners and internists often would attend the procedures performed on their patients.