The term “grave-robbing” is incorrect—in English and American jurisprudence, a dead human body isn’t property. If you’re only interested in taking the body and not the clothes or jewelry, a robbery technically hasn’t been committed. The more correct term for a person who digs bodies up from a graveyard for anatomical dissection is “body-snatcher” or, in 19th Century parlance, a “Resurrection man.”
- But how did this “resurrecting” become if not an official career choice, but a profitable side gig?
- Adam Smith summed it up nicely in his 1776 theory on demand and supply:
- More Americans are becoming aspiring medical students and doctors (the demand)
- Aspiring medical students and doctors need to understand human anatomy
- The best way to understand human anatomy is to dissect a human body
- Somebody needs to provide human bodies for medical students and doctors to dissect. (the supply)
