Holding donated human bodies in conservation: A novel interactive safe-keeping system meeting high ethical and safety standards.

"Mortui vivos docent". Learning from donated bodies is widely considered a corner stone in pre-clinical education, advanced clinical training, and scientific progress in medicine. Making such use of dead human bodies must, of course, accord with high ethical standards and legal constraints. Piety and respect towards donors require using their remains (i) for valuable purposes, (ii) with what we call 'practical decency', (iii) in an efficient way, and (iv) with the utmost safety for all parties involved. With regard to these goals, practical aspects of preservation, safekeeping procedures (for up to several years), and complete documentation become of great importance, but have so far only been realized unsatisfactorily. Here, we describe the new Safe-Keeping System-Münster (SKS-Münster) that has been developed and implemented in the Anatomy Department of the University of Münster. Integrated components of the system include a paternoster transport system, a removal station with ventilation and an air barrier, RFID transponder technology, and an easy to use software package allowing the system together to provide all required functions in an unprecedented way.

El rito de la «Apertura de la Boca» en el Antiguo Egipto: estudio bucodental de una cabeza egipcia momificada / The Ritual of «Opening of the Mouth» in Ancient Egypt: study on a mummified egyptian head

La momificación o embalsamamiento es un proceso que se desarrolló en el Antiguo Egipto para conservar el cuerpo tras la muerte, y preservar así la identidad del individuo en la vida futura, de acuerdo con sus costumbres funerarias. El rito de la «Apertura de la Boca y los Ojos», formaba parte de los ritos funerarios y pretendía devolver al difunto la capacidad de hablar y de observar en el más allá. Se realizaba sobre el cadáver previamente a su embalsamamiento, o bien se «representaba» ante la momia ya embalsamada o una estatua de la misma. Se presenta el caso de un cráneo humano momificado del Museo de Antropología Forense, Paleopatología y Criminalística de la Escuela de Medicina Legal de Madrid. Presenta protrusión lingual y fracturas en los dientes del grupo anterosuperior (AU)

Mummification or embalming is a process which was developed in Ancient Egypt in order to preserve the body after death, and thereby to maintain the individual's identity in the afterlife, in accordance with Ancient Egyptian funerary customs. The ritual of Opening the Mouth and Eyes formed part of the funerary rituals and constituted an attempt to restore the ability of the deceased to speak and see in the life beyond. It was performed on the corpse prior to embalming, or it was «performed» in front of the mummy after embalming or a statue of the mummy. We present the case of a mummified human cranium from the Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology and Criminal Studies Museum at the Legal Medicine School of Madrid. It displays a protruding tongue and fractures on the teeth in the anterosuperior group (AU)

Death, cadavers and post-mortem biomedical research: a point of view from a Christian community.

Facing modern developments of medicine and biomedical researches, religious communities are a strong source of ethics principles and orientations. Human dignity does not disappear after life, in a context of biomedical research on cadavers. Moral, political, social and scientific aspects of research on human cadavers (mainly autopsies) have been widely discussed in biomedical publications, whereas the religious ones (which could be predominant for some) have rarely been analyzed and presented. This article will present the results of a survey carried out a French Benedictine Abbey (relative to death, cadaver's status and biomedical research) and subsequent Christian background according to canonic texts and practical cases from anthropological, historical, archeological and biomedical origin.