Two years ago, medical historian and surgeon-in-training Suzie Edge found herself in the operating room, preparing to amputate a patient’s leg. She began telling her colleagues about how such an amputation might have been performed during the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, where there were no anesthetics or antibiotics, and surgeons relied on surgical saws to do their work. The head of surgery, with a mix of appreciation and mild rebuke, told her, “Suzie, you really need to go and tell these stories elsewhere.”
And that’s exactly what she did. Edge started sharing short videos recounting gory stories of the body parts of historic figures on TikTok She quickly amassed a large and devoted following, with many of them sharing their own bloody anecdotes in the comments. “They just kept suggesting things and saying, ‘Have you looked at this?’ ‘Have you looked at that?'” says Edge. “Suddenly, I had this big stack of body parts.” It was enough material for a book, so she wrote one: Crucial Organs: The History of the World’s Most Famous Body Parts It was published earlier this year.
“It’s something that we’re not supposed to like, we’re not supposed to be interested,” she says of the broad appeal of guts and gore. She found that thinking about real bodies in all of their vital carnality really brought the historic characters she had been studying to life. Below, 5 of Edge’s favorite body part stories, in her own words.
He was the only person to stab the Queen and get away with it.
1. Charles I’s Neck Bone
The first story that really stuck with me was about Charles I. His head was chopped off in 1649, and he was placed in a temporary vault with Henry VIII and several others. The Georgians [as the folks in England from 1714 to 1837 were known] loved to open tombs and coffins and have a look, so when his body was found, the doctor took a look and said, “Oh yes, this, this definitely looks like someone who’s had his head chopped off.” There was a piece through the cervical vertebrae. Now the doctor took a little piece of chopped neck bone and took it home, and he turned it into a salt cellar. He passed it around at dinner parties. This went on for years until Queen Victoria discovered it, and she said, “That’s really peculiar, and, uh, can we put it back please?” The casket was opened up and it was put back. I just found that extraordinary. It sent me digging for more of these body part tales.
2. Alexis St. Martin’s Stomach
I think one of my absolute favorites is a chap in Canada who, in the 1820s, was shot at close quarters in the chest. The wound didn’t really heal properly, so he was left with an open hole in his stomach. » …
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