Most skeletons studied by doctors, anatomists, and medical students are made of plastic these days. But it wasn’t so long ago that every skeleton had once been a living person.
It was never easy and seldom legal to acquire human skeletons. But as it also became more common to display them in museums, traveling shows, and cabinets of curiosities, the demand for skeletons – and skeleton makers – continued to increase.
So how did they get enough human skeletons to study or display back in those days? The corpses of executed criminals and suicides were free for the taking, but law-abiding corpses weren’t so easy to come by.
They often relied on so-called Resurrection Men to acquire bodies from fresh graves, hospitals, and various other places. Then to turn the corpse into a nice clean skeleton, they would either outsource the process or take care of it themselves using one of a number of “recipes.” Because it was time-consuming and gruesome, skeleton making was a very lucrative profession for a man with a strong enough stomach to do the job.
This fascinating article in Atlas Obscura offers detailed instructions on how to make a skeleton of your own with just a box, some quicklime, bugs, or a decent-sized cauldron… just in case you might want to start your own business or take up a new hobby. Click here to read the entire article in all its glory.