Alas, Poor Yorick Digging Up the Dead to Make Medical Diagnoses 英文参考文献.docVIP

Open access, freely available online Essay Alas, Poor Yorick: Digging Up the Dead to Make Medical Diagnoses Exhuming famous dead people to test their tissues is mired in legal, ethical, and moral problems Deborah Hayden Preparing for Death behind when they shuf?ed off the mortal coil could have imagined what scientists and medical practitioners of the future would do with their physical remains? Here, the line between the scientist and the grave robber blurs, as corpses are exhumed and cremation urns raided to provide organic remnants for any number of curious purposes. How does one prepare for death? Those who have created a public persona must add to any spiritual ponderings about eternity the mundane chore of organizing their literary archives to protect any of life’s secrets that seem worth the effort. That task involves choosing what diaries, letters, drafts, and laundry lists to donate to a university or to leave in a closet for legions of biographical ragpickers to quote, misquote, or variously interpret in as yet unimaginable contexts— or to burn. Ethical debates about the appropriate care and maintenance of biological relics often begin at the autopsy table. Having removed Albert Einstein’s brain, pathologist Thomas Harvey chopped it into 240 pieces and stored it in a cookie jar in his basement, often shipping slabs (mailed in mayonnaise jars) to brain researchers eager to count glia and neurons. Forty years later, Harvey lugged what remained of the brain cross-country to deliver it to Evelyn Einstein, a woman Many well-known ?gures contemplating their posthumous selves have been foiled in exercising control over their literary remains. Purposefully confounding future biographers, Sigmund Freud burned his early papers and admonished his wife Martha to destroy their love letters. Instead, she bequeathed us this charming insight into the youthful exuberance of the patriarch of psychoanalysis, written in 1884: “Woe to you, my Princess, when I come. I wil