Premature Burials at Les Innocents Cemetery

In 1786, when the Les Innocents cemetery in Paris, France was moved from the center of the city to the suburbs, the number of skeletons found face down convinced many people and several doctors that premature burial was very common. [Source]

The cemetery was closed after it became a hotbed of infection and disease following around ten centuries of overuse. It was decided that the empty tunnels on the outskirts of the city, now ‘The Paris Catacombs’ (above), would be the dead’s final resting place. In a process which took place only at night, ‘behind a procession of chanting priests, began a parade of black-covered bone-laden horse-drawn wagons that continued for years … the bones were deposited in a wide well … and distributed throughout the underground caverns by workers below.’ [Source]

From 1757 to 1775, Ben Franklin lived in an elegant four-story Georgian house at No. 36 Craven Street in London during his time as an ambassador for the American colonies. In late 1998, a group calling itself Friends of Benjamin Franklin House began to convert the dilapidated building into a museum to honor Franklin.

One month into the renovations, a construction worker was working in the basement when he found something odd: a small pit was in a windowless basement room. Inside, sticking out of the dirt floor, was a human thigh bone.

The police were called and supervised excavation continued. More human bones were pulled up. And more. And more, until some 1,200 pieces of bone were recovered. Initial examinations revealed that the bones were the remains of 10 bodies, six of them children, and were a little more than 200 years old. Their age discouraged any interest from Scotland Yard, but piqued the curiosity of historians and the Institute of Archaeology. The bones’ age meant they may have been buried in the basement around the same time that Franklin was living in the house.

Did America put a serial killer on the $100 bill? Almost certainly not. Continued study of the bones revealed that some of the bones had been sawed through. Others bore the marks of a scalpel. A few of the skulls had been drilled into. The evidence pointed not to murder by Franklin, but anatomical study by his friend William Hewson.

(Source: mentalfloss.com)

An x-ray of a Chinese woman’s feet after being bound. The Chinese practice of footbinding, popular since medieval times, was banned only in 1911. Young girls’ feet were wrapped in bandages to prevent them from growing longer than 4 inches. By age 3, four toes on each foot would break, often leading to infection, paralysis and atrophy. Some elderly Chinese women today still show disabilities.

Polydactyly is the anatomical abnormality of having more than the usual number of digits on the hands orfeet. It is a congenital abnormality, usually geneticallyinherited as an autosomal dominant trait. There are several varieties of polydactyly; this X-ray photographshows a left hand with middle ray duplication. In Western societies, the additional digits are usuallysurgically removed during early life.

Photo credit: Drgnu23 and Grendelkhan