Posts tagged M. Dionis

Instruments required for “opening a body” [autopsy] *The term “L’ouverture d’un corps” was used at this point in time to refer to an investigation into the cause of death, not a general dissection Though most deaths were simply chalked up to diseases and common causes of the day, there were a limited number of legitimate and well-performed autopsies that took place before Rudolf Virchow’s book on standardization of autopsy procedures was published, in 1850. The vast majority of those autopsies were performed so as to prove cause of death for a murder trial. In this particular book, M. Dionis also notes that you can easily discern the work of particularly bad surgeons on a cadaver, and that they ought to be held accountable for at least contributing to the death. Mind you, this was a time when 60%+ surgeries were ultimately fatal, so these surgeons that M. Dionis is implicating must have been particularly awful at their job… Cours d’Operations de Chirurgie. M. Dionis, 1757.

Instruments required for “opening a body” [autopsy]

*The term “L’ouverture d’un corps” was used at this point in time to refer to an investigation into the cause of death, not a general dissection

Though most deaths were simply chalked up to diseases and common causes of the day, there were a limited number of legitimate and well-performed autopsies that took place before Rudolf Virchow’s book on standardization of autopsy procedures was published, in 1850.

The vast majority of those autopsies were performed so as to prove cause of death for a murder trial. In this particular book, M. Dionis also notes that you can easily discern the work of particularly bad surgeons on a cadaver, and that they ought to be held accountable for at least contributing to the death. Mind you, this was a time when 60%+ surgeries were ultimately fatal, so these surgeons that M. Dionis is implicating must have been particularly awful at their job…

Cours d’Operations de Chirurgie. M. Dionis, 1757.

Pompeii had preserved Roman medical tools. Some of them were nearly the same as what were used over 1800 years later.

Left: Reproductions of Pompeii surgical instruments at National Museum of Medicine

Right: Cours d’Operations de Chirurgie. M. Dionis, 1757.

When I was trying to find the exact number of bones in a newborn (adults have 206, kids have ~300, was looking for the number in a 9-month fetus, really), I found this answer to some other question…I don’t know why, but I thought it seemed relevant. You’d be floppin’ around like a Raggedy Ann doll. You wouldn’t even be able to stand up, walk or even sit up in a chair. Without your bones you’d simply be a pile of organs, guts, skin, water and biochemical goo on the floor. You want bones. Bones are good. All I found regarding newborn baby bone number is 270. I recall a few bones that develop after birth (like the patella), but I didn’t think that over 30 bones were formed between the initial count and the time that everything ossified. L’anatomie de l’homme, suivant la circulation du sang. M. Dionis, 1723

When I was trying to find the exact number of bones in a newborn (adults have 206, kids have ~300, was looking for the number in a 9-month fetus, really), I found this answer to some other question…I don’t know why, but I thought it seemed relevant.

You’d be floppin’ around like a Raggedy Ann doll. You wouldn’t even be able to stand up, walk or even sit up in a chair. Without your bones you’d simply be a pile of organs, guts, skin, water and biochemical goo on the floor. You want bones. Bones are good.

All I found regarding newborn baby bone number is 270. I recall a few bones that develop after birth (like the patella), but I didn’t think that over 30 bones were formed between the initial count and the time that everything ossified.

L’anatomie de l’homme, suivant la circulation du sang. M. Dionis, 1723