The scribe sat down to do his work. It was just like any other day. He was in the business of copying and pasting millennia before we had computers to do the job for us. Bent over the page, he carefully scratched out over four hundred lines of hieroglyphs. This was a really important project. The document he was copying was already over a thousand years old, and its preservation was important. But although he was a master of his craft, he was a bit out of his depth with what
he was transcribing. The source document talked about the human body from the top down and from the inside out, and this scribe was encountering glyphs he had never seen before. He scratched out his errors and made notes in the margins his writing implement, clumsily, making strokes for characters unfamiliar to him. In fact, according to later scholars, he created the earliest known asterisks in the history of bookmaking. But what did make it onto his page was really marvelous stuff.
A collection of anatomical case studies and a treatise detailing scientific procedures for dealing with various injuries. And then, in the middle of his project, somewhere between the thorax and the spinal column he quit. No one knew why, not James, Henry Breasted, or any of the Egyptologists who came before him. It had landed on his desk in nineteen twenty, already estimated to be thirty years old. But James saw something important and alarming when the scribe started writing again. He
started copying something completely different. Magical incantations to fight pestilence, spells to manage women's health concerns, and tricks to make old men young again. James and his fellow Egyptologists didn't know for sure, but they suspected that this ancient scribe was unaware of the importance of the work he had left unfinished, and James would go on to spend years
pouring over it. It proved to be a singular, remarkable artifact, the earliest known evidence of human dissection as a practice, a blueprint for ancient scientific surgery. Experts believe that the original document copied by the scribe was known as the Secret Book of the Physician and had originally circulated more than five thousand years ago. This document was important because it gave evidence of a stark departure from folk medicine
and magic, replacing it with rational scientific observation. It represented a remarkable moment in time when people were finally pulling the body apart and going inside of it to seek out answers to its deepest mysteries. Sadly, James and his contemporaries never found the source document, and because of that we might never know how the original book ended. What did the ancient Egyptians know about our inner workings? And
how long ago did they know it? How much was lost only to need to be rediscovered again in a different time, in a different place. For the moment, it seems like it's lost to history, but the quest continues, and as a story it illustrates a powerful idea. Even today, we're still hard at work adding to our body of knowledge. I'm Aaron Manky, and welcome to bedside Manners. Corpses have
been a hot commodity for centuries. Over two thousand years ago, physicians in Greece were busy doing human dissections on the unknowing dead and surgery on the unlucky living. They wanted to know what made a person tick, But, as it so often happens, moral taboos around the body won the day and practices changed around one fifty b C. The Romans had banned human dissection, so physicians were forced to take a bit more of the offhand approach, if you will.
They began working on animal corpses, which were a poor substitute for now of the reasons. And with this turn, the parade of scientific progress around understanding our cavities ground to a halt. But hungry minds never stopped seeking, They just started to look elsewhere. Around one sixty two, A. D. Claudius Galen came to Rome as a physician. He was rich, well traveled, and educated, having dabbled in many schools of medicine. He was also arrogant and popular, serving as a physician
to gladiators and emperors alike. But Galen's lasting legacy would change the course of medicine for centuries. His impact came in the form of a theory, one which had been handed down by the ancient physician Hippocrates. It had to do with how precise balance of certain bodily fluids could make or break a person's health, and because he was both prolific in his writings and a fanatical self promoter, his ideas stuck around for a very long time the
Renaissance changed that. Though it was an explosive time of profound cultural change, a veritable feast of scientific inquiry and art, it was the perfect moment to interrogate the past and to find new ways forward. At the time, European medical schools were in the bad habit of not asking hard hitting questions. They simply passed down the truths of the ancients. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, had been practicing dissections throughout the
Middle Ages, well before the return of secular practice. During the Renaissance. The clergy was in the habit of slicing open their own in the search for physical proof of holiness, and these sanctioned examinations did yield earthly gains. More folks began to think about what dissection could offer outside the walls of the church. By the mid fifteen hundreds, though emboldened anatomists and training had taken notes Galen had never opened a body, how could he possibly know what went
on inside there. They were out to shake the foundations of their own profession. Flemish anatomist Andreas Vassilias wanted to bring this practice back to the broader public. In fifty three, he public the first ever systematic map of human anatomy. His contemporaries soon followed, suits in droves and European operating theaters opened for audiences. It was entertainment, but probably not the sort of show that you'd want to see after dinner.
With the founding of London's Royal Company of Barber Surgeons around the same time, the city attempted to establish two distinct professional classes, those engaged in high level anatomical work and those considered to be haircutters and bleeders. But although there were anatomical theaters in London, there were no dedicated schools to attend. This was due to the very strict laws around what one could do with the dead, which
was well not a lot throughout the UK. There were a lot of restrictions that kept teachers and students from accessing bodies. One of the most effective was the Company of Barber Surgeons monopoly on the few corpses of executed criminals that were legally donated each year. In places like Paris, laws were more relaxed, so anatomical schools could access pps Is for students to dissect. If London was going to be a competitive place to train, there was an educational
void that needed to be filled. But you know what they say, where there's a will, there's a way, along with a bit of ingenuity to go with it. And if you give an enterprising mind a scalpel, they're going to want their own dissecting room to enter. William Hunter William was a Scotsman who came to London around seventeen forty two specialize in obstetrics, but what he found instead was barely better than what he had had at home.
After some time, he decided to go his own way, providing pupils with his own courses in dissecting, operative procedures and bandaging. In the once opulent and now ceed Covent Gardens neighborhood of London, William rented a flat right there among the brothels and tenements. Williams set up a shop, not a bachelor pad, mind you, but one for corpses and those who sought to learn from them. In seventeen
forty five, though something changed. There was a split within the company of barber surgeons, with the barber's and the surgeons each going their separate ways, and because of this, the surgeons were obliged to relax their rules around how human dissection occurred in London and who got to partake.
Within a year, William was advertising his lectures, offering the community and I quote the opportunity of gentlemen learning the art of dissection during the whole winter session in the same manner as at Paris, and by all accounts, William's school was an overnight sensation. In time, he would even go on to expand his small solo operation into a family business by inviting his brother John to join his ranks. Both men were incredibly hard workers and together the brothers
would change the world. They would open up a bold new landscape in the field of anatomical study. They couldn't have been more different. While William had a knack for drawing crowds, his brother John shrank from the attention. William was refined and John was rough. William was smooth and John was abrasive. But John was also fresh faced and bright. Arriving from their Scottish home with an insatiable mind and boundless gusto, he took the shadowing William in both the
classroom and the operating theater. He took classes alongside the other young minds and even acted as his older brother's assistant. Together, they worked to make William's vision of his anatomy school come to life. John, for his part, settled in happily at twenty. He was finding his way and doing so
with beguiling confidence. He soon became a man about town, frequenting the bars and theaters and coffee shops in the colorful Covent Gardens area, and he developed relationships of all kinds, some that would later come to help him with his work. You see, William had given John a special task. It was far from pretty, but to him it was a privileged position. He would be in charge of finding fresh specimens for their students. But of course, every job requires
having the right tools. After all, how could an artist learn to paint without a canvas, or a potter without clay. That same logic had always applied to anatomy. John was a visionary, though, who dreamed of reforming medicine, and he saw the study of anatomy as key to this. Theories and concepts are one thing, but it was better to learn from the dead than to make potentially fatal mistakes with the living. In death, these bodies could give up
their secrets. The dead had a lot to teach, after all, and John didn't want any opportunities to pass them by. He was methodical in his work, and his acute attention to detail set him apart from his peers. John was working in a dynamic landscape on this internal world that felt no different than trying to discover the secrets of the stars. In fact, it was probably far more exciting back then. Just how methodical was he well, He smelled
his specimens, even tasted them. He explored the body's dark cavities like a passionate spelunker, documenting everything and reporting back with his findings. John's approach might have been atypical, but the data gathered as a result would prove to be unmatched. It was during this time that William facilitated John's employment
at St. George's Hospital. There, he became a junior surgeon, and along with his new title, he received something else, keys to the hospital Morgue, where he was now able to borrow and practice on new material. For twelve years, the brothers worked tirelessly side by side. In time, John Starr would even usurp Williams. His affability and dexterity won him many fans and followers. By the time he decided to strike out on his own, John had become one
of the most experienced anatomists in all of Europe. He was met with a snag though, even though he had proven his skill, he lacked a professional degree in surgery that would allow him to land a permanent job in a hospital setting. Because of this, he took a detour and headed to the battlefront, where he became an army surgeon. Upon his return, he decided that he would set up shop and in his own home. No less, his wife and their four children opened their doors to the most
unfortunate cases. In doing so, John made a name for himself, becoming a full fledged appointed surgeon at St. George's Hospital. Within a few years he had even become the personal surgeon of King George the Third. And it was right there in his home office that John did his best work. He was surrounded by a morbid menagerie of over fourteen
thousand specimens preserved as taxidermy and floating in jars. There was a kangaroo skull and the remains of the first giraffe to be exhibited in Europe, as well as a bull from Queen Charlotte. In five, when he was ready to expand his operations, he moved to a new house at Lester Square. There he hosted distinguished guests and curious students alike. The faint smell of death hung in the air, ascent that couldn't be undone, despite the flower that John
kept in the big house To mask it. He had created a teaching museum with a front entrance for visitors, and as the whispers went a back door for the bodies. In the still early morning hours, the resurrection men would come knocking. They were a semi bunch, largely independent contractors who operated in an underground black market operation to pilfer
the newly dead from the graveyards. John saw his work as a force for good, but that didn't mean that everyone wanted to end up on his operating table, especially if they hadn't volunteered to do so. His work was necessary, yes, but some might also argue that it was dishonorable. He was just really good at using the ends to justify
his means. But as he and his family settled into their new home, there would be one particularly controversial specimen that John had his designs on procuring, one that would cast a dark shadow over his reputation for years to come. Ye. Standing at eight ft two inches tall, Charles Byrne was the tallest man in the world. His stature gave him the markings of a celebrity, and his refined trimmings made him a sight to behold. Charles's name splashed big and
bold in the headlines across Europe. He was gentle and elegant and had come to town to entertain anyone who would pay for the privilege. When he arrived in London in seventeen eighty two, the twenty one year old Irish Giants caused quite a stir. There was great curiosity about Charles's height, and he was even presented before the Royal Society in a game of good natured speculation. One story
that was told was a legend about his mother. It was said that she had a love affair high up in a haystack, pointing to the altitude as the cause of his great stature. Maternal impression was a convenient and common tool to blame the mother for the child's differences, and for better or worse, it also made for a great story. He was well known across the Irish countryside.
Some folks saw the potential dollar signs in the attention that he received, and by the time he was a late teenager, Charles had alighted off on a European tour as a traveling showman. As he made his way through towns and cities, folks gawkeed at Charles, whether or not he was on stage. It was said that the Irish giant could light his pipe from the street lamps without so much as standing on his tiptoes. He entertained audiences all across London, to including an engagement with the King
and Queen. He toured rooms and halls and taverns, the ladder of which would prove to be the beginning of his downfall. You see, it was at a public house one evening when Charles was pickpocketed, his entire fortune vanishing in an instant. When he realized this, Charles was inconsolable. His drinking had increased in recent times, and this loss made him seek the bottom of the bottle more than ever. But although his body was still growing taller, was also
growing weaker. He contracted about of tuberculosis, and by May of seventeen eighty three it was clear that death was coming for the Irish Giants. Not all were saddened by this, though, We're spurs were circulating in the anatomous circles, with each person eager to get their hands on Charles's body. Charles, of course knew this, and he was very, very afraid. In fact, there was one surgeon in particular who was the most eager of them all, the one and only
John Hunter. Now, according to legend, Charles had already been approached by John, who offered to give him money now while he was still alive, in exchange for his corpse later. Charles was utterly horrified. Of course, he, like many others, considered human dissection to be its own kind of indignity, better saved for criminals. Charles was also a god fearing man, and he believed that he'd be denied a heavenly reception on Judgment Day if his physical body was in pieces.
In the aftermath of his encounter with John Hunter, he made his friends promise that when he did die, his body would be weighed down in the led coffin and thrown out to sea. But John Hunter was not to be defeated. In fact, he hired a spy and installed him in an apartment close to Charles's quarters. This agent was instructed to keep John up to date on Charles's worsening condition and inform him of any dramatic changes. The Irish Giant passed away on June one, three, and the
newspaper immediately reported it. A mass of hungry anatomists descended on Charles's residence like vultures, each one clamoring for his body. They offered ransoms and bribes to the undertakers, and went so far as to buy their own diving bells, with which they intended to raise the giant's leadline coffin from its watery depths. But before he was shipped out to see he was put on display intact one final time. But little did they know that John Hunter was already
many steps ahead. It's been reported that John hired a crooked undertaker to switch out Charles's body for his exact weight and paving stones. The undertaker knew Charles's friends, and it seems that he had encouraged them to make a pit stop at a tavern as they ventured to their own waiting ship. They left the body of their deceased companion outside in a barn where the undertaker and his
henchmen made this which and dashed away on paper. The body of Charles Byrne was worth the modern equivalent of about fifty dollars to John Hunter, but when he finally took possession of this corpse, he panicked. In fact, it appears that he never even dissected him. It's believed that he was so afraid of reprisal from John's friends that he quickly dismembered and boiled it, gathered the bones, and
then reassembled the skeleton. It would be four years before he ultimately revealed his secret to the public, hoping that that was enough time to have passed, that interest had waned, making the public outcry much less severe, and maybe it worked. John Hunter's transgression, at least to some degree, had been forgotten, along with the last wishes of Charles Byrne. Of course, today his skeleton is still on display, having never made
it to his final resting place. It's easy to believe the exploitation of Charles Byrne was all in vain, and in a way it was John got what he wanted, Charles's body and the opportunity to learn what made that body so different what it was that caused him to never stop growing? And if there was anyone who was going to be capable of cracking this mysterious coat, it
would have been John Hunter. After all, his work had led to an explosion in knowledge about the body, everything from bone growth, inflammation, and venereal diseases to the lymphatic system, child development, and dentistry. If Charles's body had to fall into the clutches of someone's hands, John's were at least very capable. But nerves got the better of him. John squandered the opportunity to advance medical science. However ill gotten
the gains may have been. It would be another century before a defect in the pituitary gland would be pinpointed as the cause for gigantism. John didn't slow down, though, he worked hard and continued to have a career after this unseemly chapter. He advanced through the ranks, eventually becoming the Surgeon General in sev He died three years later of a heart attack, and in keeping with his own
pro actuses, John Hunter donated his body for autopsy. Almost two centuries later, in nineteen seventy two, twenty year old Brendan Holland traveled from his home in Ireland to St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. He was almost seven feet tall and still growing. After having his pituitary gland radiated, that growth stopped. In two thousand nine, a leading experts on
growth hormone conditions came upon something really interesting. She had been working with Charles Burns and Brendan Holland's DNA and was able to identify a rogue gene mutation. Come to find out, it's thought that both men shared a common ancestor as far back as fifteen hundred years ago. Distant cousins spread across centuries and united by microscopic programming that shaped the stories of their lives. Our long and winding history with the human body has given us plenty to
think about all these years later. From the battle to make dissection acceptable to the ethical struggles around how to use it, we've done our best to navigate quite the bumpy road, and that challenge has never gone away. In fact, we have one more story to share with you about that ever evolving field. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. Right. Dr William M.
Bass was no stranger to the dead. As a forensic anthropologist, he was a combination of an archaeologist and a detective who specialized in reading bones. So when Dr Bass was called to do some sleuthing on some remains found in a shallow grave, he was prepared to perhaps find a freshly laid murder victim. But this, as it would turn out, but proved to be no ordinary case. The grave had been dug a few feet down and in it was
a headless body atop a coffin. Dr Bass knew that this particular coffin belonged to a Confederate soldier by the name of Colonel William Shy. But as to how this second person got here, well, that's what Dr Bass needed to solve. He saw that the headless body still had pink skin, and it had really no signs of extensive decomposition. So the corpse was removed and sent to his lab
for further investigation, but Doctor Bass stayed behind. He continued to poke around the scene and saw that the colonel's coffin had a foot wide hole in it, and upon looking into his box, Doctor Bass found exactly what he was expecting. Nothing. He knew that after more than a hundred years in the muggy Tennessee heat, a body would
have disintegrated completely. Doctor Bass presumed that the hole in the coffin had been made by a murderer who figured, well, they might as well take a look around while they were burying their victim. But back at the lab, the mystery was deepening. The lab had deduced that the body belonged to a white man in his mid twenties, and he appeared to have been dead for a little bit less than a year. But his suit was somewhat tattered
and it had some very odd detail and lacing. This gave Dr Bass an idea, so he went back to the colonel's grave. Further inspection helped him locate a skull at the bottom of the coffin, one with a very obvious bullet hole, and one that very much seemed to match the recovered body. And that's when the true story snapped into place. It seems that, despite all odds, Colonel William Shy was this headless mystery man. But the question remained.
How the investigators determined that Colonel Shy, being from a wealthy family, had been embombed, and when he was sealed in his cast iron coffin. It arrested his decomposition, and he stayed relatively fresh, And it was only recently that his grave had been disturbed, not by a killer covering their tracks, but by contemporary grave robbers. Dr Bass knew right away that this case was striking. It also solidified
something that he had long been thinking about. There was just so much that we did not know about human decomposition, so he set out to rectify that. In nine eight, he created what is now known as the Body Farm, situated near the University of Tennessee Medical Center. The Body Farm is a three acre tract of land surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. Here Dr Bass and his team have created various microclimates shallow graves, car trunks, tree shade,
and ponds. They may wrap bodies and rugs or encase them in concrete. These various situations create different paces of decomposition, all of which are then meticulously studied. Since the farm's inception, Dr Bass and his team have brought in thousands of cadavers. The bodies arrive at the farm in one of three ways. They're donated by the now deceased individual, donated by the family,
or if unclaimed donated by the State Medical Examiner. The Body Farm is at the forefront of helping forensic anthropologists, medical examiners, and crime scene investigators develop sophisticated ways to understand how a body's deteriorated state has come to be, especially when we're asking the questions about when, how, who, and maybe even we can attribute a lot of what
we know to Dr Bass and his work. Even still, the work has its attractors, and more countries work towards opening their own human decomposition research facilities, they're being met with pushback. Neighbors worry about pests and scavenging animals, and generally might feel a little bit uncomfortable by the prospect of potentially catching a glimpse of their new neighbors. It's a tale as old as time, though studying other animals just can't come close enough to mimicking human tissues to
give us the knowledge that we need. It's a really tricky subject. It's really hard for us to think about what happens to our bodies after we die, and we certainly don't want to think about them being left out in the sun, left for scavenging animals, or what other
things might come of us. Even still, it's probably worth reflecting on our own general I when it comes to thinking about all of these things, and seriously considering whether or not our own eventual deaths and whatever might come of our body could possibly hold the key to someone else is life. Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by Aaron Manky and narrated by Aaron Manky
and Robin Minater. Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with research by Sam Alberty, Taylor haggerd Orn and Robin Minater. Production assistance was provided by Josh Thane, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show, the Grim and Mild team, and all the other podcasts that we make over at Grim and Mild dot com, and, as always, thanks for listening.