Every October , the great unwashed start drag out their ( plastic ) skeletons from the depths of their closets . Whether it pass off to be atowering Skellyor a more human - sized specimen , the decorations are a classic part of spooky time of year decor .
fictile skeletons were n’t always readily available on store shelf . AndHalloweenisn’t the only time the boney structure have been in high demand . For 100 , people have used skeletons to con about the human soundbox . Being able to see what a fleshless figure looks like has long been a worthful tool for doctors and other medical professionals . And of course , those Renaissance scientists and scholar did n’t have the option of ordering a plastic one from Amazon .
Where do medical schools get their skeletons from?
The devising of human teaching skeletons used to be agrisly affair , involving the manipulation of sweet — or not - so - overbold — corpses . But as the above video from British Pathé shows , by the 1960s it was a comparatively benign craft involving molded charge card and high temperatures , not heart cleavers and maggots .
The video , accented by moan - worthy puns and debonaire medicine , goes inside a factory in Surrey that produces formative skeletons , psyche , and other organs for use in hospital and medical schools . The sterile surroundings marked a shift in frame production ; as the video notes , teaching skeletons had long come from the Middle East until countries started clamp down on exporting human clay .
Before that , human frame in Britain and the United States were often produced with a lilliputian help from grave - robbers , known asthe Resurrection Men . After being break down in anatomical classes at aesculapian school , the stolen corpses were often de - fleshed and translate into physical object for written report . The theft of these purloined eubstance , by the way , started several of America’sfirst wow .
Not every cadaver displayed in a med schooling schoolroom is artificial . A person can choose todonate their body to science , which means aesculapian schools are capable to legally prevail human cadaver .
A version of this story to begin with ran in 2017 ; it has been update for 2023 .
