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The Anthropology of the Medical Uses of the Human Body
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
In 1866, six Inuits were taken to the United States for the purpose of serving as specimens to American scientists at the Natural History Museum. Shortly after their arrival in New York, four of them had died. One of the survivors returned to the Arctic, while the sixth, Minik, now alone, fought to make possible the return of the remains of his dead companions to their village. Since the latter were being exhibited, as was then often the case (and happens even today in many museums), in order to offer visitors examples of the Inuk people, Minik protested in vain. In 1909 he returned to Greenland when the scientists denied that the remains of his friends still existed. Several years later, still pursuing the issue, he went back to the United States to take up the fight against the bureaucracy for the repatriation of the bodies. He died in the United States in 1918. It was only in 1993 that he won out and that the remains of the four were returned to the Arctic homeland.
1. Liberation, August, 26, 1993.
2. With regard to the striking passion of Nazi anatomists in the death camps and the occupied territories during the Third Reich and their obsession with the col lection of organs and bones demonstrating the "degeneracy" of other peoples, one dreads to think of all those other bodies that remain without burial today.
3. J.M. Ball, The Sack-'em up men! An Account of the Rise and Fall of the Modern Resurrectionist (Edinburgh, 1928). A.G. Mitchell, "Anatomical and Resur rectionist Activities in Northern Scotland," in: Journal of the History of Medicine, 4, 1949; A.F. Guttmacher, "Bootlegging Bodies," in: Bulletin of the Society for Medical History, 4, 1935; D. Le Breton, La chair à vif. Usages médicaux et mondains du corps humain (Paris, 1993), Ch. 3.
4. P. Linebaugh, "The Tyburn Riot against the Surgeons," in: D. Hay et al., Albion's Fatal Tree (London, 1975), 65-117.
5. M. Rufo and M. Burki, "Les parents donneurs d'organe. Etude préliminaire," Neuropsychiatrie de l'enfance, 38, 1990, 309.
6. T. Tymstra et al., "Experiences of Bereaved Relatives Who Granted or Refused Permission for Organ Donation," in: Family Practice, 9, 1992, 141. See also F. Fulton et al., The Cadaver Donor and the Gift of Life: The Social and Psychological Impact of Organ Transplantation (New York, 1977), 338-76.
7. M. Lock and C. Honde, "Reaching Consensus about Death. Heart Transplants and Cultural Identity in Japan," manuscript, 5. On the larger debate see Cahiers du LASA, 15/16, 1993.
8. Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, February 26,1994.
9. For this reason, medical students cover up the face of the corpse they dissect in their anatomy courses. The removal of man's-humanity is in fact always achieved by the disappearance of his face. See D. Le Breton, Des visages. Essai d'anthropologie (Paris, 1992).
10. See M. Mauss, "L'essai sur le don," in: Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris, 1950).
11. Idem, "Gift, gift," in: idem, Cohésion sociale et division de la sociologie. Oeuvres (Paris, 1969), Vol. III., 46ff.
12. Idem, "Essai" (n. 10), 159.
13. The numerous associations of transplant patients or advocates allow, over and above the medical care, to offload indirectly the stifling sense of gratitude that they feel and with which they nevertheless have to continue to live. Through devoted service to others who are waiting for the transplantation or are recov ering, through the militancy of the "gift" of the organs, the unbounded debt hopes to achieve gratification; it becomes a form of life.
14. M.R. Corniglion, Vaincre la mort. Un chirugien greffé du coeur témoigne (Paris, 1986), 59 and 155.
15. M. Carton and P. Defert, "De l'émodialyse à la greffe," in: Lieux de l'enfance, 9- 10, 1987, 329f. Even more traumatic is an organ transplantation when the donor is a living relative, as happens with kidney transplants. To the crushing sense of debt is added a guilt feeling that the other person has been mutilated and that he or she might in turn fall ill. The sacrifice is inscribed in the face and the sides of the person to whom one owes one's life thanks to his or her voluntary muti lation. Jean Bernard ("Greffe et transplantations d'organes," in: Réadaption, 372, 1990, 13) quotes a girl who was cured from leucemia thanks to bone-marrow taken from her brother. She declared: "If I see it correctly, I am a chimera, and my heart pumps my brother's blood through my body." See also G. Raimbault, "Morceaux de corps en transit," in: Terrain, 18, 1992, 15-25.
16. In the collective imagination organs are endowed with particular moral or physical qualities: the kidneys refer to reproductive powers, to strength; the heart to intelligence, intuition, and affectivity; the liver primarily to courage and to anger; the lungs to rhythm, to breathing etc.
17. The family of the donor informs itself about the recipient, or it is regularly informed about the state of the removed organs. The survival of the organ in the recipient's body gives it a sense of the continued existence of their loved one. The organic part changes with the metonymy of the recipient. The consent of the donors' families, based on the argument that the body is nothing, is sud dently transformed into its opposite: the transplanted heart, the kidney mark the symbolic survival of the person that once held it. The associations with the donor combine the rational argument that the body is useless after death with the notion of "prolonging the life of the donor" thanks to the fact that his organs have been transplanted. These are irreconcilable arguments.
18. J.-C. Crombez and P. Lefebvre, "La fantasmatique des greffés rénaux," in: Revue française de psychanalyse, 37, 1973, 95-107. Many cases of sexual problems among the recipients, but sometimes also among the donors have also been observed. H.L. Muslin ("On Acquiring a Kidney," in: American Journal of Psychiatry, 127, 1971, 1185-88) describes three phases relating to the integration of the new kid ney into the self-image: at first there is a period of self-estrangement, of disqui eting distance; then follows a period of partial incorporation; finally there is the incorporation phase. See also D. Le Breton, La chair a vif (n. 3), Ch. 6.
19. R.M. Eisendrath, "The Role of Grief and Fear in the Death of Kidney Transplant Patients," American Journal of Psychiatry, 126, 1969, 381-87; D. Silbertin-Blanc and S. de Lattre, "Crises psychotiques après greffe rénale," in: Revue de médécine psy chosomatique, 3, 1985, 11-21; P. Castenuovo-Tedesco, "Organ Transplant, Body Image, Psychosis," in: Psychoanalytical Quarterly, 42, 1973, 349-63.
20. On this topic see D. Le Breton, Anthropologie du corps et modernité (Paris, 1990).
21. Idem, La chair à vif (n. 3).
