Dead stuff

Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know ... . Saartje Baartman, the so-called “Hottentot Venus” of South Africa, was exhibited to a paying public eager to get a look at her exaggerated buttocks. She was too modest to display her equally-legendary elongated labia, but was at the mercy of medical men who arranged for custody of her corpse within twenty-four hours of her death in 1815. Baartman was anatomized and plaster cast. French naturalist Georges Cuvier preserved her brain and external genitals in fluid, and boiled her bones to assemble her skeleton.  English anatomist William Harvey, best known for discovering the circulation of the blood, dissected the bodies of his father, his sister, and his cousin’s husband. Although these anatomical dissections were conducted privately, Harvey mentioned them in his lectures to students, noting the huge size of the colon he removed from his father’s abdomen and the heavy weight of his sister’s spleen. The activities of Harvey and his peers did not escape the notice of the public, and led to the persistent stereotype that anatomists are troubled, emotionless ghouls. No. I didn't know, and didn't care that I didn't know, but was intrigued by Saartje Baartman  She looks like Michelle. .Here's the rest