Do the Dead Have Interests? Policy Issues for Research After Life

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 261-291
Author(s):  
Dorothy Nelkin ◽  
Lori Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Tissues ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
University College London

The importance of establishing rights in a dead body has been, and will continue to be, magnified by scientific advancements. The recent explosion of research and information concerning biotechnology has created a market place in which human tissues are routinely sold to and by scientists, physicians and others. The human body is a valuable resource.The body of the nineteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham is on display in a glass cage at University College, London. Bentham applied his utilitarian perspectives to the body by suggesting that corpses, including his own, would be of greater use to society stuffed and displayed as an “auto-icon” rather than simply buried away. Preserved, exhibited and studied, the corpse, he said, could serve “moral, political, honorific, dehonorific, money-saving, money getting, commemorative, genealogical, architectural, theatrical, and phrenological” ends.

scholarly journals The disorderly body: considerations of The Book of Numbers, 19 and ritual impurity after contact with a corpse

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
Sandra Junker
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The People ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Living Creature

This article deals with the idea of ritual bodily impurity after coming into contact with a corpse in the Hebrew Bible. The evanescence and impermanence of the human body testifies to the mortality of the human being. In that way, the human body symbolizes both life and death at the same time; both conditions are perceivable in it. In Judaism, the dead body is considered as ritually impure. Although, in this context it might be better to substitute the term ‘ritually damaged’ for ‘ritually impure’: ritual impurity does not refer to hygienic or moral impurity, but rather to an incapability of exercising—and living—religion. Ritual purity is considered as a prerequisite for the execution of ritual acts and obligations. The dead body depends on a sphere which causes the greatest uncertainty because it is not accessible for the living. According to Mary Douglas’s concepts, the dead body is considered ritually impure because it does not answer to the imagined order anymore, or rather because it cannot take part in this order anymore. This is impurity imagined as a kind of contagious illness, which is carried by the body. This article deals with the ritual of the red heifer in Numbers 19. Here we find the description of the preparation of a fluid that is to help clear the ritual impurity out of a living body after it has come into contact with a corpse. For the preparation of this fluid a living creature – a faultless red heifer – must be killed. According to the description, the people who are involved in the preparation of the fluid will be ritually impure until the end of the day. The ritual impurity acquired after coming into contact with a corpse continues as long as the ritual of the Red Heifer remains unexecuted, but at least for seven days. 

scholarly journals The Dead Body as a 'Lieu De Mémoire'. The Body-Object and the Living Body in Caitlin Doughty’s Nonfiction

Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-101
Author(s):  
Cristina-Mihaela Botîlcă
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Twenty First Century

Between Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire and Paul Ricoeur’s body-object there appears to be a relation of community and personal memory. Before death, the human body holds three meanings: material, symbolic, and functional, but post-mortem the body also becomes a place where both community and individual can update their relationship with death and mortality. In the twenty-first century, secularization of death practices inevitably leads to a secular view of the body. In Cailin Doughty’s nonfiction, the body seems to stand at the crossroad between spirituality and secularization, so between the meaning of the body and the body as a lieu. This paper will discuss how Nora’s and Ricoeur’s interpretations of memory and body apply to Doughty’s representation of the dead body within a death denying twenty-first century Western society.

Not over Moses’ Dead Body: Jude 9, 22-24 and the Assumption of Moses in their Early Jewish Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-213
Author(s):  
Ryan E. Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Jude 9 refers to a story in which the archangel Michael disputes with the devil about the body of Moses. Although the story cited by Jude has not been preserved, the literature of early Judaism contains several traditions that can inform one’s understanding of Jude’s source. This article explores these traditions, especially early Jewish interpretations of Zech. 3, in an effort to throw light on this story and its use in the epistle of Jude. These traditions suggest that the disagreement between Michael and the devil over Moses’ body pertained not to the burial of Moses’ corpse, as previous scholarship has assumed, but to Moses’ bodily ascent into God’s presence. In this ascent account, the devil would have opposed Michael on the grounds that Moses’ fleshly, human body was inadequate for God’s presence. Further, it is probable that Jude 22-24 alludes to the same ascent story.

Viollet-le-Duc and the body: the metaphorical integrations of race and style in structural rationalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Frank Lloyd Wright ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Architecture Theory ◽  
Compositional System ◽  
Critical Interest

At first glance, it might seem counterintuitive to insist upon Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc's (1814-79) critical interest in the human body as a metaphor for style in architecture. Not only did he oppose the anthropomorphic metaphors for style touted by Neo-Classical theorists at the École des Beaux-Arts, but he was most widely known in the nineteenth century for his preoccupation with the monumental and structural potential of modern materials such as iron. This reception of Viollet-le-Duc's thought persisted in the twentieth century with Sir John Summerson's estimation of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier's debt to the constructive principles of his architectural organicism. Such accounts have made it possible to interpret construction and/or structure as the main ‘body’ of Viollet-le-Duc's architecture theory. However, this reading confuses the eclipse of Neo-Classical anthropomorphic metaphors for style - which translated the proportional relationships between the human body's constituent parts into a compositional system of design - with the complete eclipse of critical references to the human body in the French style debates of the nineteenth century. As we trace the role of the human body in Viollet-le-Duc's style theory, it becomes clear that the principles of human variation in biology and ethnography enabled him to account for the cultural variations of national peoples in his conception of style.

Science and Medical Study: Early Nineteenth Century

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Neville Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Medical Training ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Living Body ◽  
Medical Study ◽  
Surgical Model ◽  
Anatomical Basis ◽  
University Course

The strong utilitarian impulse to make medical training more practical— the subject of the last chapter—coincided in time with a growing understanding of the human body. Indeed, the remarkable advances in anatomical knowledge of the eighteenth century were crucial to the adoption of the surgical model of teaching students in the nineteenth century. Medical educators now accepted without question the anatomical basis of disease and put increasing emphasis on anatomical studies and personal experience in dissecting the human body in their teaching. Whether in a university course, a hospital clinic, a school for practical physicians, a program for midwives, or private classes, by the early nineteenth century the study of anatomy, both theoretical and practical, was seen as the cornerstone of all medical teaching. It was by means of the study of anatomy and the routine performance of autopsy, the famed French clinicians taught, that a real understanding of disease could be ultimately gained. In their zeal to discover new means of diagnosing illness in the living body, they searched for ways to determine the presence of telltale lesions or faulty functioning in the body that were not visible to the human eye. To “see” inside the body, to “feel” the presence of disease, to hear the sounds of irregular function would enable the physician to understand the course of the disease before it was found at autopsy. If disease were local and lodged in the organs and tissues, as Morgagni and Bichat had demonstrated, then the new French technology of measurement, percussion, and auscultation would enable the physician to locate it and, conceivably, to arrest or extirpate it. The practical impulse in teaching and the new anatomical science of pathology thus worked together to create a new, more hopeful approach to the ancient riddle of how illness began, spread, and worked its mischief. The French achievement in creating a science of pathological anatomy out of the study of diseased tissue, declared the German clinician Karl Pfeufer, brought to medicine a “hitherto unknown sharpness of diagnosis.”

scholarly journals The Body in Jesus’ Tomb as a Hylemorphic Puzzle: a Response to Jaeger and Sienkiewicz and an Application for Christological Anthropology

Perichoresis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
James T. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Prime Matter

Abstract In a recent paper, Andrew Jaeger and Jeremy Sienkiewicz attempt to provide an answer consistent with Thomistic hylemorphism for the following question: what was the ontological status of Christ’s dead body? Answering this question has christological anthropological import: whatever one says about Christ’s dead body, has implications for what one can say about any human’s dead body. Jaeger and Sienkiewicz answer the question this way: that Jesus’ corpse was prime matter lacking a substantial form; that it was existing form-less matter. I argue that their argument for this answer is unsound. I say, given Thomistic hylemorphism, there was no human body in Jesus’s tomb between his death and resurrection. Once I show their argument to be unsound, I provide a christological anthropological upshot: since there was no human body in Christ’s tomb, there are no human bodies in any tomb.

scholarly journals The Body and Sexuality in Siam: a First Exploration in Early Sources

MANUSYA ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 42-55
Author(s):  
Barend Jan Terwiel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Proper Theory

In this article some aspects of the relationship between the degree of display of the uncovered body and sexuality are explored, using data from Thai historical sources. A close look at some illustrations in manuscripts from the Ayutthaya and Thonburi periods establishes that prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, Siamese etiquette allowed for large parts of the body to be exposed to public gaze. It is assumed that this may have affected attitudes towards sexuality. A hypothesis whereby the relatively generous display of the human body is correlated with a larger degree of matter-of-factness towards the body and has an effect on courting behaviour is tested on historical and ethnographical data. At first sight the hypothesis appears to be confirmed but because of the scantiness of the data at hand, further research is needed before a proper theory of early Thai sexuality can be developed.

Indigenous Anatomies

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-116 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Multidisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Body Concept

As bioarchaeologists who deal directly with the human body, we often neglect emic understandings of the body that are important to interpreting the worldview of indigenous populations. In this paper, Andean notions of the body are presented using indigenous terminology in an effort to highlight dramatic differences in body concept interpretation. Furthermore, three bioarchaeological Andean case studies will be presented to illustrate perceptions of the age and wellness in different archaeological contexts. It is suggested that highly contextualized and multidisciplinary research questions need to be developed in an effort to interpret emic social and cultural dimensions of the living and dead body and mortuary practices.

Microstructural comparison of synthetic bioceramics with natural bioceramics

1991 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 38-39
Author(s):  
Shulin Wen ◽  
Jingwei Feng ◽  
A. Krajewski ◽  
A. Ravaglioli
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Human Tissues ◽  
Main Constituent ◽  
Laboratory Furnace ◽  
Chinese Adult ◽  
Human Enamel ◽  
Biological Compatibility ◽  
Synthetic Hydroxyapatite ◽  
Synthetic Work

Hydroxyapatite bioceramics has attracted many material scientists as it is the main constituent of the bone and the teeth in human body. The synthesis of the bioceramics has been performed for years. Nowadays, the synthetic work is not only focused on the hydroapatite but also on the fluorapatite and chlorapatite bioceramics since later materials have also biological compatibility with human tissues; and they may also be very promising for clinic purpose. However, in comparison of the synthetic bioceramics with natural one on microstructure, a great differences were observed according to our previous results. We have investigated these differences further in this work since they are very important to appraise the synthetic bioceramics for their clinic application.The synthetic hydroxyapatite and chlorapatite were prepared according to A. Krajewski and A. Ravaglioli and their recent work. The briquettes from different hydroxyapatite or chlorapatite powders were fired in a laboratory furnace at the temperature of 900-1300°C. The samples of human enamel selected for the comparison with synthetic bioceramics were from Chinese adult teeth.

Correction of Posture Deviations in the Sagittal Plane Using the Pilates Method

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Alexandru Cîtea ◽  
George-Sebastian Iacob
Keyword(s):  
Low Back Pain ◽  
Back Pain ◽  
Postural Control ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Sagittal Plane ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lower Limbs ◽  
Low Back ◽  
Pilates Method ◽  
The Relationship

Posture is commonly perceived as the relationship between the segments of the human body upright. Certain parts of the body such as the cephalic extremity, neck, torso, upper and lower limbs are involved in the final posture of the body. Musculoskeletal instabilities and reduced postural control lead to the installation of nonstructural posture deviations in all 3 anatomical planes. When we talk about the sagittal plane, it was concluded that there are 4 main types of posture deviation: hyperlordotic posture, kyphotic posture, rectitude and "sway-back" posture.Pilates method has become in the last decade a much more popular formof exercise used in rehabilitation. The Pilates method is frequently prescribed to people with low back pain due to their orientation on the stabilizing muscles of the pelvis. Pilates exercise is thus theorized to help reactivate the muscles and, by doingso, increases lumbar support, reduces pain, and improves body alignment.

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