A relatively common urban legend that has circulated for the last several hundred years, “The Relative’s Cadaver” relates the story of a medical student who, in a medical anatomy class, is assigned the body of a relative to dissect. Variations of this legend include a relative who is mysteriously lost to the family but suddenly appears on the dissection table, or in some versions the encounter of a famous person or friend. More dramatic versions mention that it is the medical student’s first day of anatomy class, and thus also the medical student’s first encounter with a corpse.
Tales of the Relative’s Cadaver are not new and have been circulating in some form (either oral histories or in novels) for centuries. The popularity of this urban legend may be able to be traced to the popularization of dissection as a commonly accepted practice in medical school. In the United States, the first formal anatomy class was taught at the University of Pennsylvania in 1745, but dissections were generally only allowed on convicted criminals. This led to a shortage of corpses for dissection until laws were changed in the mid-nineteenth century (Hulkower 2011). Medical students no longer had to wait until a criminal died to dissect a human cadaver; the new laws permitted the donation and dissection of unclaimed bodies or those who had died without known relatives or family. Thus, the origins of the urban legend may coincide with the practice of states utilizing unclaimed bodies for anatomy courses in medical schools.
Several stories have perpetuated this popular medical school urban legend. Probably the first is the tale of the corpse of Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, who died in 1768. Rumors circulated that grave robbers had stolen his body and sold it to Cambridge University’s medical school for the anatomy class. There is speculation today that this story was fabricated. However, this tale emerged in England largely because of the growing fear at the time of grave robbers, who would dig up fresh corpses from graves and sell them to medical students for dissection on the black market.
A much more recent and well-known story actually occurred and was documented in a letter to the editors of the Journal of American Medical Association. In 1982, a medical student at the University of Alabama recognized one of the nine cadavers presented to her anatomy class for dissection as her great-aunt. Ironically, the student had recently held a discussion with her great-aunt before her death about the virtues of donating her body to science. Though the student’s own assigned cadaver was not her aunt, the state anatomical board decided to switch the cadaver from the class so that the student would not be subjected to watching the dissection of her relative.
The underlying theme of this (sometimes true) urban legend generally concerns an encounter with morality the corpse, in which the medical student is confronted with the proximity of death through the recognition of the cadaver to be dissected. The story, in all of its variations, relates a deeper recognition that if one is going to work in medicine, one must be prepared for death to occur even among one’s family and friends. No one is exempt from death—not even those trained to extend life.
Candi K. Cann
See also Kidney Heist, The; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Bennett, Gillian, and Paul Smith, eds. 2007. Urban Legends: A Collection of International Tall Tales and Terrors. Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood.
Bronner, Simon J. 1990. Piled Higher and Deeper: The Folklore of Campus Life. Little Rock, AR: August House.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2012. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, Updated and Expanded Edition. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Hulkower, Raphael. 2011. “From Sacrilege to Privilege: The Tale of Body Procurement for Anatomical Dissection in the United States.” Einstein Journal of Biology and Medicine 27 (1): 23–26.
Mitchell, Lisa. 1982. “Familiar Faces.” Omni (November): 146.
Salter, E. George, and Clarence E. McDanal Jr. 1982. “Her Relative Was the Cadaver.” Journal of the American Medical Association 247 (15): 2096.
Smith, Paul. 1983. The Book of Nasty Legends. New York: Routledge.