Murder Act 1751

In fact, it's even more than that.

It's a taboo to be dissected as a cadaver, and that stems from a British law passed in eight- 1752 called the Murder Act, and it made that if you were a executed criminal, then you could be publicly, or be permitted to be dissected by a medical program.

So it creates an addition to already preexisting, um, religious and just sentimental ideas about death, a kind of desire to not be associated with criminals, who would be, like, almost shamed after death because they would've been, um, dissected by these medical school students.

So the medical-

Was that the law?

Executed criminals, particularly the Murder Act of 1752 or something, somewhere around there, basically meant it was executed murderers specifically.

So it was even more like niche than that.

And the main reason for that really was it came from sort of religious beliefs around the time.

So, you know, human bodies, selling tickets.

Yay! In 1752, the Murder Act was passed in England.

Murder was made illegal.

Finally! Wait a

that was until the anatomy act of 1832 in britain.

1832 is too ancient, but that's fascinating.

One thing that the Murder Act and all of the ensuing stuff did allow for was far greater understanding of how our bodies work and the function of many, many organs.

So things like we understood that digestion was a chemical process and that food wasn't mechanically ground in the stomach, which is what we thought was happening beforehand.