Autopsies des morts célèbres de Philippe Charlier avec David Alliot
I am still more comfy with english written. Released recently, I start to tell you that I was intrigued ad attracted by this book because of the topic.
I am a reporter and time ago I attended a meeting about the meaning of autopsy in modern times.
It was an agitated meeting, a colleague fainted at some point looking at the picture of a decapitation and I won't never forget the faceless man seen in a picture. Said it, it was interesting and our relators enthusiastics.
The book opens with a consideration: the interconnection between humanistic sciences and the so-called scientific world. This fusion at the moment permits a more complete vision of the whole, revealing much more about what happened to people dead a lot of time ago, and facts considered by the author énigmes historiques, historical riddles can be resolved.
The development of palenthology but also this mixture of medicine and history is seen not just in the direction of human corpses but interests also old objects considered real patients, because they have a remarkable story to tell.
These methods, and history of medicine, mixed and interesected with what found by archeologists, in the case of antique objects or corpses is helpful for define the historical moment taken in consideration giving back an entire panorama of the situation of that precise century or millennium: a situation often speaking about migration, illness defeated by men, but also cases of cancer or infections.
Clarity of the past means to put another piece in the puzzle of the history of humanity.
This book couldn't be born without the help of these realities: Collège de France, Institut Pasteur, Académie des sciences, École
pratique des hautes études, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, société de géographie, société des explorateurs français, etc.
This book is ambitious: it wants to answer many answers.
It will reveal why Lucy, the prehistoric lady died, but also if science should "violate" the privacy of known people who once dead are subjected at autoptic exams trying to define the medical discretionality and its value, considering that all these people died a lot of time ago.
The part involving the Prehistoric age, you will see will be interesting and partly alarming to my point of view, because as you will read permafrost once destroyed could give us back, surprise! some prehistoric viruses, not known by the humanity. Countries seen with attention, USA (Alaska), Russia (Siberia), Mongolia, China, Scandinavian ones.
Potentially dangerous for propagation of viruses, it is known the case of a chinese who went in North Siberia and returned to Shangai with a virus absolutely unknown to the humanity.
A great city, a great risk of propagation.
Of course the authors speak of theoric risks. We are surrounded of powerful medicines in grade to defeat a lot of illness. Focusing on the discovery of America, Native Americans were also decimated by the viruses of the Old World brought in America by Europeans.
It's not just a story of viruses but also bacterians taken prisoner by the permafrost. If the first ones maybe lost energy with millenniums, the second ones are more than thrilled to be set free, plenty of new energy, according to scientists.
But... What kind of informations can give us corpses?
I didn't know this, but it seems that all the infectuous agents in a corpse resist at the passage of time, like also bacteriums, parasites and they just wait for the perfect moment for "resuscitate" let's use this expression. This condition persists per centuries, not years.
That's why when doctors and scientists manage corpses take a lot of precautions. It's important to work in safety, trying to avoid possible messes and the spread of illness absolutely unwanted and forgotten by the entire humanity.
Another fact I didn't know is that thanks to antibiotics, ingestion of certain food, dead people don't know sometimes a complete decomposition. Under many ways it is a consolation.
Also when found a bone, pretty old, we musn't never think that that bone has lost "energy" and proprieties.
As you will read it is the opposite.
A body speaks when dead. A body also if materially dead is alive and potentially dangerous for people and for the transmission of illness. The second chapter explains the meaning of decomposition.
We will see what happened in Egypt, what happened to the bodies of Pharaos and to people of the middle-class, let's use this term and the differences existing in the procedure of embalming bodies.
Lucy was a body preserved at the 40%. A prehistoric one. At first scientist thought that she fell from a tree, and, considered the numerous fractures, she died.
Is this the reality or can scientists write something else?
Intriguing story, rich of hypothesis and pretty engaging with absolutely stunning results.
The following chapter of this book treats the man of Nehandertal and the following one Cro-Magnon.
The authors will explore the universe of the old greek feminine corpse. If a woman was sterile she was considered an infamy and she could be repudiated and excluded by every kind of social life.
Why women became sterile in Old Greek?
For important infections not cured, because of fibrosis. What people could do was just to ask to the various divinities an intervetion, visiting temples, bringing homages to various divinities.
That part of the body of women was not studied during autopsies although with the time situation thanks to the use of a tool called speculum doctors discovered more and later, dissections revealed where the various part of the feminine sexual and reproductive organs were located. The uterus was considered at a certain point as a "little ambulant monster." Menstruation were lived with repugnance by men, while the mixture of seminal fluids of men and and women were lived during the centuries by Greek in different ways. Aristotele thought that woman's passivity meant masculine activity.
What did a woman with man's sperm was to nurturing, transforming it.
In the past before to studying women's corpses, scientists became accustomed to analyze other kind of animal's female's corpse.
Women when pregnant in the remote past didn't follow at all any medical advice, preferring magical support.
The authors treat also the sad chapter of natural selection and the departure of many new born children.
Intriguing the chapter of Marie de Magdala; you will remember...Jesus Christ took her under his wings.
She was the one who saw, once Jesus died, some angels and the angels said her that Jesus wasn't anymore where they had buried him because he resuscitated.
The authors analyzed the skull.
You must know that the skull of a person as remarked by the author is incredibly important because it gives back the treat of the face, and as written before many other important informations about the person.
We speak of course of a relic, and so special permission were requested as you will read and were analyzed 500 pictures.
I won't add other details about age etc.
It will be for all of you a pleasant discovery.
The body of a person shouldn't scare us, because as said before it's in grade return to life thanks to the patient work of people who tries to see, in death, a new shape of life.
Hospitals have always been a necessity for sick people. The first ones were greek and their name were asklepeion.
Roman thought that hospital, so the building had to be like military structures.
But it's in 529 d.C. that the modern hospitals were born with christian touch and religious inspiration.
Sure epidemic changed sometimes the face of these structures but this chapter is also fascinating because we see the cultural history of places born for curing, assisting, helping people to return to life as soon as possible. Historically detailed it is rich of informations.
Cancer is taken in consideration with Anne of Austria.
People think that cancer is a modern illness while, unfortunately it is sadly old.
Infections are for cancer a good occasion for appear to the horizon.
French, Romans, we see that cancer was an element of death or an illness also in the past, just maybe, remarks the author some kind of cancers are disappeared and other ones are born thanks to new conditions.
We will discover that cannabis is extremely dangerous. Pesticides, antibiotics (yes they can be a co-cause of cancers, when I discovered it I stopped to take them) a world always more chemically structured have stimulated other kind of cancers, including new dangerous and unfortunately still mortal infections like HIV is.
In France the concept of good departure is known from the XVI, XVII century. The preparation at that moment is lived researching a good death, a good moment.
After all also Latins treated the subject speaking about the meaning of the so-called ars moriendi, « l’art de bien mourir,» the art of dying.
It's as they will write the authors, the art of living the moment courageously, leaving what there is behind and marching in that unknown new world waiting for us, if we believe.
Analyzed the brain of Descartes, did you know that in Russia there is a special institute just for brains of famous people who made the difference for that country? There, they preserve the brains of people like Lénine, Mendeleïev,Tourgueniev and Russian speak also of the big superior intellect of the Homo Sovieticus.
René Descartes died in Stockholm on Febr 11 1650. The body returned to France although let's say some parts of the body... missing!
A chapter is dedicated to the kings of France and another one to Chopin. Although the composer was clinically dead because of tubercolosis, it seems that he was also infected by another illness that brought him to death: DAAT (déficit en alpha-1 antitrypsine). This illness causes a chronic respiratory insufficience.
The heart of the composer wasn't in good conditions as you will read.
We will discover the illness of Jules Verne, the addiction of Balzac for coffee, a bad habit that would have brought him to death with other important co-causes as well.
The authors takes in consideration the modernity and new elements accumulated like also traditions in various part of the world when a person dies unexpectadly or for violent death.
Hitler: his death. He would have committed suicide with lover Eva Brown but story was still uncertain.
The authors tried their best, in two phases, to examining all the material in possession of the various countries, including the ones of Russians for demonstrating that, after all, the remains of that bodies are the ones of Hitler and Eva Brown.
Is there life after death? Y a-t-il une vie après la mort? Asks the authors.
Molecular theories, passing throught shamanic experiences, a fascinating trip in a chapter of the existence after death that it is captivating.
When my dad died, being in a hospital, I understood that a dead man has still heart's activity. In fact it was done an ECG for half hour.
Not only: also other cells, muscular ones continue to live after the departure of the person.
What it dies, immediately, is our brain.
Substantially the patient, better, all the body of the person dies, but...slowly.
It's not an abrupt departure as most people imagine. It happens with graduality.
Each organ needs its time for saying good-bye to this world.
Death, writes the authors is not a solitary act, it's an evolutive process and it is never immediate.
Not only: I love this philosophic touches. "Death is part of our existence, writes the authors and as we build our existence we build our death."
It makes me think...
I start to tell you that I immediately loved this book since I saw the cover weeks ago. I wanted to request it immediately but who knows me, knows that I spent very heavy years and I wasn't sure that the topic could cheer me up.
I know something else: that I fell interested for autopsies, if I can use this expression, when I read a book written by a Massachusetts's writer enthusiastic of the topic. When a person loves the topic rarely it will present it to you banally or scaringly.
When there is competence, no one will be heavily touched or traumatized by the matter.
And so I thought that yes, I could trust these authors. I didn't know them, I read this book in five hours more or less and I found this book absolutely intriguing, beauty. I personally discovered other facts of human body and what it happens after our death that I still didn't know, but it is a trip that won't be scaring but objective, linear, reassuring.
Our body will continue to speak for us also once we won't physically exist anymore and I found it... comforting. It's sad to think that life ends with our death. Well, it's not like that.
Historically I loved the reconstruction of the birth of hospitals, but also the spasmodic research of scientists, their being always more precise when they discover a new and old body. At the same time the precision of an autopsy can't avoid also precaution because in general it is not examined the body of a person dead for natural causes but for violent death or strange illness.
This book can be read absolutely by everyone because it is simple, understandable, accessible, and there is a lot of respect for life and death, for bodies taken in consideration and for what it means our passage on this Earth and what we leave in terms of knowledge at the posterity. I appreciated this touch a lot.
Highly recommended.
I thank Editions Tallandier for the copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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