Historical story

What a cadaver can still tell

Even if it can no longer talk, you can learn a lot about a corpse by carefully examining the body. Forensic pathologists and archaeologists are doing their best to find out what happened in those last living moments.

Look, feel and record carefully

You're not dead until a doctor has declared it. Sometimes the cause is immediately apparent. But if the doctor has doubts whether the victim clearly died of violence, then a judicial section will follow. Step by step, a coroner (the pathologist) studies the body -external and internal - to find out exactly what this victim died of. Sometimes you can already see a lot from the outside. “I was once given a body that the doctor initially thought was the cause of death,” says the forensic pathologist. “But in the skin under the victim's hair was a hole in the shape of a snag. I could squeeze the skull like that; completely shattered. I have never seen such an injury as a result of a fall. A sharp object had to be the cause."

After the external inspection, X-rays are taken and the pathologist opens the body with a large cut in the shape of a Y. All major organs (liver, brain, lungs, heart, pancreas, adrenal gland and spleen) are examined, weighed and cut a five gram slice off the organs. The pathologist forwards the material to colleagues who study the body parts at a microscopic level. Then the slices go to the toxicology department, where toxicologists look for drugs and toxins.

Bugs in the autopsy room

The pathologist does not like the work itself:“Cutting is a tedious act. I do it as support in catching a perpetrator, or sometimes just to acquit someone. Every now and then the creatures fly and crawl through the autopsy room, you have to be able to handle that. It is important not to stare blindly at the victim's face during the autopsy. It is better to look purely at the anatomy of the body; that makes it less personal and more scientific.”

Identification

Sometimes criminals try to make the victims unrecognizable by mutilating them. Justice once brought in a woman without head and hands. In such a case, the pathologist should look for other external features for identification. Hair on the neck, for example, betrays the hair color. Then they look for more general characteristics, such as stretch marks or scars. The pathologist:“A corpse was even brought in once without skin; it was completely skinned. All outward appearances had been taken away. Then we have to move on to inner features, such as scars from an appendectomy or another internal surgical procedure.”

Dissolution

No matter how badly a body has deteriorated, there is almost always some tissue left. In the case of a skeleton, the pathologist can have hair or bone marrow examined. All drugs and medicines that the victim has used can be found in the hair. Drugs enter the bloodstream and are passed on to the flakes that make up the hair. These hair flakes therefore contain traces of the drugs. In principle, every used aspirin can be found in it. But poisonings are unfortunately difficult to trace, because the small amount spreads all over the body. In thirty percent of the cases we find nothing at all.

Physical Anthropology

But what if a corpse has already decayed so far that we only have skeletal material at our disposal? Then we enter the field of archaeologists, and then specifically the discipline of paleopathology.

Contrary to what the television series Bones would like us to believe, it is very difficult to determine the cause of death in skeletons. Because you can only draw conclusions from traces on the bone, you miss a lot of information. There are several fatal diseases that leave marks on the bone. For example, some forms of cancer can be seen in the bones. But even if these traces are found, that does not necessarily mean that someone eventually died from them. A person suffering from cancer might as well have died of pneumonia or an infection. And traces of this can usually no longer be found.

By force

A violent death can be determined to a certain extent. The moment someone sustains damage to their bones, the body will try to repair the fracture or hole. The body makes a connection of connective tissue between the two bone parts. We call this phenomenon callus formation (fibrous callus). After a few months, as recovery progresses, the body forms real bone (osseous callus) and breaks down the fibrous callus. A fracture or hole from which someone has not died shows callus formation, because the body tries to heal the wound. This does not happen with a fracture or hole in which someone has died.

So much for the theory. In practice, however, archaeologists often have to contend with post-mortem damage to the skeletal material. The pressure of the ground or, for example, an awkwardly placed shovel can cause damage to a skeleton that looks suspiciously like a fatal fracture.

This distinction is also difficult for specialists in the field of paleopathology to make. They look for subtle clues on the skeleton, such as heels and cut marks from weapons. They also look at the bone margins. In a fatal fracture, they are often very sharp and do not follow the bone structure. In a post-mortem fracture, the bone edges are jagged, but they do follow the structure of the bone.

More corpses is more information

For archaeologists, the cause of death isn't the only thing skeletons can tell. They also provide information that is relevant to reconstruct a population. Especially when there is a burial field and we can therefore compare the results of individual skeletons, we can form a complete picture of a particular society. How old did one become? Did you eat healthy? How was the overall health? Did they have to do heavy physical work? The dead tell you more than you think.


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