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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Surgical skill
Casebook Message Boards: General Discussion: Medical / Forensic Discussions:
Surgical skill
Author: Thomas Ind
Sunday, 09 July 2000 - 03:05 pm |        | Just a view that I have always held against surgical experience. All doctors are taught to hold a knife properly early in their training as they have to dissect bodies. This was more so in th 1880s where students acted as dressers also. The correct way to hold a knife (the correct term for a surgical knife is a knife not a 'scalpel') can either be like a pen for delicate work or as in my rather hazy picture below downloaded from a training video.
The correct way to hold a knife
I think the drawings of Eddowes suggest a knife held more like this picture;
This would result in a number of 'saws' up and down to result in the ragged abdominal entry. If the knife was held correctly, then a straight incision would have been made |
Author: Thomas Ind
Sunday, 09 July 2000 - 03:07 pm | | | OK I have the images the wrong way round, but you know what I mean |
Author: Jill De Schrijver
Sunday, 09 July 2000 - 03:46 pm | | Wow,
Skip my question 1 in my post on the Hysterectomy thread: you've already visualised that superbly
Thanks,
Jill |
Author: Peter Wood
Monday, 06 May 2002 - 08:44 am | | So this post hasn't been used in a while, but I wanted to "park" part of a post that I've just put on "Time for ..." as I fear that much of it was 'off topic' there. Hopefully it will be o.k. here. Here it is:
I was watching a programme on good old British terrestrial television t'other night and it was about how the Victorians treated their dead.
Apparently, for a long time, it was not illegal to steal bodies from graves, but in doing so the perpetrators could be charged with other minor offences.
There was a shortage of bodies available for post mortem examination due to the fact that the Victorian's liked to be buried "whole", fearing some sort of eternal damnation if they weren't.
Apparently the only bodies available for 'dissection' were those of convicted murderers. Of which there weren't many.
Then, a change in the law meant that anyone who died without the money to afford a burial could be offered forward for a post mortem examination, like it or not.
Suddenly, from having just hundreds of bodies a year available for examination, there were in excess of fifty thousand.
It then became common practice for body parts to be thrown in rivers as a means of disposal. The problem even got so bad that the outbreak of a cholera epidemic could be traced to a source of water contaminated with rotting human flesh.
So, does anyone still think that Jack the Ripper would have had to do what he did just to get access to certain organs? Especially when, on more than one occasion, he failed to remove the organ(s) that he was supposed to be after?
Food for thought.
Peter. |
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