Human Remains.

Two words, innocuous when apart but when placed together conjure up any number of negative scenarios. Perhaps it’s because headlines like “Human Remains Found In Park” or similar are so often screamed at us from the tabloids, intimating a crime has been committed. Horror stories of people living in a house “with human remains” remind us of Norman Bates and the desiccated cadaver of his mother. Maybe it’s because the organ retention scandals from Alder Hey and other hospitals in the mid 1990s, which led to the formation of the Human Tissue Authority, are so fresh in the minds of the general public that human remains are still associated with nefarious Frankenstein-ian behaviour. Whatever the cause of this discord it is erroneous: human remains are simply what is left of us as humans when we pass away. They remain.

The relationship between ourselves as a species and human remains changes over time and across cultures. Some tribes will exercise the taboo on the dead in which touching the dead and even being near them, or mourners, is considered abhorrent. Yet others, such as the Toraja of Indonesia, have a closer relationship with the remains of their deceased kin, disinterring them during the festival of Ma’Nene each year to clean and re-clothe them.



In the Western world, a tension lingers because human remains can exist as both subject and object: they can be considered both subjectively and objectively.



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I encourage these contradictory forms of cogitation as well as an intimacy with human remains, especially in medical museums, as a means of both education and reflection (and by “intimacy” I mean that which was relayed, for example, by Bronwyn C. Parry in her paper on her encounter with Iris Murdoch’s brain not necessarily physical intimacy).

Far from this being a novel and somehow bizarre idea, it is a type of contemplation which has been practised for thousands of years. Some Buddhist monks, for example, cultivate maranasati or “mindfulness of death” via the Nine Cemetery Contemplations, in which they consider each stage of human decomposition - from fresh death to skeletonisation - in order to understand their own mortality and the transience of life. From the 13th century onwards this spawned a type of artwork called kusôzu (and corresponding poetry: kusôkanshi) which depicted the deceased in all stages of decay, and was recently exhibited at Forensics: Anatomy of Crime at the Wellcome Collection. Similar focus on death and decomposition continued through the medieval era via memento mori jewellery, paintings and sculpture.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kusôzu: The Death of a Noble Lady and the Decay of her Body. Photograph: C. Valentine, courtesy of Wellcome Collection

More recently we have begun to understand this need for contemplation of mortality as the general public display a willingness to discuss medical collections, death, and dying once again. The movement is, in part, philosophical with organisations such as Death Cafe and Death Over Dinner initiating quite literal “dinner party conversation” around a topic that was once considered taboo.

Still more recently, educational and press articles on the physicality of death and decomposition have flooded the media. For example, the discovery of microbe sequences which can help to determine time of death and the current discussion on the creation of a UK taphonomy facility or “Body Farm”, an idea which began in the US and has now reached Australia. Many of the public seem ready to find out more about what happens to us physically after we leave this mortal coil.

I encourage this discussion. As custodian of anatomical specimens, and as an anatomical pathology technologist, I have researched the benefits of contemplating human remains and how that relates to our quality of life, and the findings are astounding. Research by the University of Kent and the Association for Psychological Science indicates that “thinking about mortality in a more personal and authentic manner may make (people) think more about what they value in life.” This philosophy even gave rise to Korean Funeral therapy which was very recently in the news again.

As a result of this desire to engage people with human remains in an accessible way I began the ‘Death’ember Countdown on my Instagram account @remains2beseen. It’s a type of advent calendar to introduce the public on a daily basis to some remarkable pathology specimens and their narratives, most of which are from pre-1900 yet are still relevant today: gout, the effects of corsets, heart disease and more.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest This heart specimen from 1908 (which has been repaired by me) illustrates Pericarditis which is inflammation of the pericardium: the membrane around the heart. Photograph: C.Valentine

These body parts were removed in a pre-consent culture, to enable potential surgeons and doctors to learn the necessary skills in a time before cadaver donation, photography and virtual reality existed. For everything we know about surgery and for every time we’ve been successfully treated at a hospital, a debt is owed to some nameless patient who unknowingly donated a part of themselves for the knowledge of future generations. I encourage research, spectatorship and discussion of these specimens so that their sacrifice has not been in vain - so that we can continue to use them for the greater good, whether that be teaching medical students or encouraging the general public to contemplate their mortality and make the most of life. Perhaps even in some cases a spectator may be experiencing the various symptoms I describe and decide to visit a doctor? Intimacy with death and disease - not fear - can save lives. Researching these specimens brings their stories to the forefront and makes them people once more, not just “pots”.

Making dissections of cadavers public helps us embrace life, as well as death | Carla Valentine Read more

And let’s not forget that the intricate preparation and preservation of the specimens means they are objects of material culture, representative of an enlightenment period. Should we destroy them? On the one hand, we do have textbooks now which may make some feel the specimens are redundant, but I’ve never been in an art gallery and overheard someone say, “We should destroy these Rembrandt landscapes: we don’t need them, we have cameras now.”

As well as real interaction I encourage the use of social media. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag insinuates the problem with looking at contentious images in galleries is that there is too much distraction - books are better as they allow us our own personal time to contemplate the content in peace. If we apply that logic then social media is simply the new version of a book. Specimens/photographs/images, whether of suffering or of the dead, are meaningless without corresponding narrative, and social media on mobile devices enables us to utilise the modus operandi of a book yet with unlimited narratives and images. Plus, we can consider them wherever and whenever we have the peace and quiet to do so.

I use social media to engage with human remains and advocate their usage on my website www.remains2beseen.wordpress.com because I think we need to take the time to look and familiarise ourselves with real death. We need to appreciate our own mortality by contemplating our transience.

We need to understand that no matter how much we fight it, death becomes us all.

Carla Valentine is a qualified senior anatomical pathology technologist and technical curator at Barts Pathology Museum.She blogs about her work on The Chick and the Dead and can be found on Twitter.