HW 52- Third Third of Care of the Dead Book

Precis: In the previous chapters of this book, I haven't even begun to get into all the astonishing atrocities that almost no one is aware of. In China all the way up until about 1910, a common practice was to consume parts of decayed human cadaver as medicine. Although it would not necessarily cure you, it was believed to ease pain when taken with alcohol. This choice was not out of desperation; many people actually enjoyed the meat of the dead. Aside from that, it has also been discovered that heads chopped off by the guillotine were actually functional for about 5 minutes after decapitation. After knowing all of this information, I still plan to donate my body and organs to science.

"Well, one can see that you don't look in the basket when they are all there together. You've never seen them twist their eyes and grind their teeth for a good five minutes after the execution. We are forced to change the basket every three months because they cause such damage to the bottom." (Roach, 201)

"On May 21, Guthrie succeeded in grafting one dog's head onto the side of another's neck, creating the world's first man-made two-headed dog." (Roach, 207)

"People were swallowing decayed human cadaver for the treatment of bruises." (Roach, 224)

"Likewise powdered human penis, as prescribed in the Chinese Materia Medica, was "taken with alcohol." The stuff might not cure you, but it would ease the pain and put a shine on your mood." (Roach, 228)

"Chong describes a rather gruesome historical phenomenon wherein children, most often daughters-in-law, were obliged to demonstrate filial piety to ailing parents, most often mothers-in-law, by hacking off a piece of themselves and preparing it as a restorative elixir." (Roach, 233) Ewww!

"He writes that in years past, another job perk of the Chinese executioner-in addition to supplemental income from human blood and fat sales-was that he was allowed to take the heart and brains home for supper." (Roach, 237)

As I was reading this last section of this exceptionally well written book, aside from being utterly disgusted, part of me thought back to the food unit. I'm sure at least most of us would agree that eating decayed human body parts is pretty vile, but as we learned in the food unit, so is eating most hamburgers in America. And similarly to the people in China who used to eat human cadaver, many of the students in this class are fully aware of what is inside that kind of processed meat, and yet many of us still choose to consume it simply because the taste is too enticing. I will never be able to look past my views on cannibalism, but in reality, who are we to judge these cannibalistic activities; at least what they did supposedly had health benefits!