Historical Fun Facts
A team of French Scientists named Hayem and Barrier took 22 heads of an animal and put it through a guillotine to test if heads could still smell once they were chopped off.
Then a scientist named Laborde, who was known for his transplants of many different organs, created the first live 2 headed version of this animal. What type of animal was used in both of these experiments?
a) dogs
b) chickens
c) cows
d) pigs
a) dogs
Historically, what did some people make body fat into?
a) Candles
b) Coats
c) Food
d) Face Masks
a) Candles
What were some of the body parts that were prescribed as medications in the 1800’s? (It is now known as medical cannibalism)
a) the eye
b) finger and toe nails
c) crushed up bones
d) skin
e) b and c
f) all of the above
e) b and c
What bachelors degree does Mary Roach have?
a) Phycology
b) Science
c) Mortuary sciences
d) English
a) Phycology
In history, what was one way medical schools got their cadavers for students to practice on?
a) body snatching
b) donations
c) hospitals
d) the morgue
a) body snatching
When a plane crashes and a cadaver survives, a photographer will take a picture of it before it is moved and send it to the lab. Why does this happen?
a) To identify the cadaver remains and then contact their families
b) to predict how and why the plane crashed
c) crime scene evidence
b) to predict how and why the plane crashed
In the book what is a one way cadaver heads are used in medical school?
a) practicing cosmetology
b) practicing facial enhancement surgery
c) dissection of the cadaver head
d) practicing different face surgeries like bone transplants
b) practicing facial enhancement surgery
Mary Roach was mugged by....
a) raccoons
b) monkeys
c) people
d) chickens
b) monkeys
What was used in the army to test how damaging guns could be to humans?
a) Human cadavers
b) Live Dogs
c) Live Pigs
d) All of the above
d) All of the above
In 1795 the head librarian at the Paris School of medicine declared his belief that once a head was cut off by a guillotine it could still…?
a) see
b) think
c) hear
d) smell
e) all of the above
f) a and b
e) all of the above
Cadaver body parts are used as car crash “dummies.” What are some scenarios that were used in the book?
a) Puts a whole cadaver in the front seat and crashes the car
b) chops off the cadaver fingers and shuts them in the windows to see what would happen
c) cuts off the cadaver arm and puts it on the wheel while crashing the car
d) b and c
e) all of the above
d) b and c
What does Mary Roach specialize in?
a) popular biology and english
b) psychology and english
c) popular science and humor
d) english and humor
c) popular science and humor
In 1907 Dr. Duncan Macdougall began a series of experiments to test if a soul had mass. He installed six dying patients onto a special bed in his office that sat upon a platform beam scale sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce.
He found no significant loss in weight so he moved onto poisoning 15 ___ to test his theory again.
a) more patients
b) dogs
c) monkeys
d) cats
b) dogs
In 1931 Dr. Barbet wanted to prove that Jesus was crucified on the cross and went on to amputate and use 12+ of his patients ____ in order to prove it?
a) legs
b) ears
c) arms
d) feet
c) arms
What college in the book has a grassy field full of dead bodies to test decomposition?
a) UCLA medical center
b) University of Minnesota Twin Cities medical center
c) University of Michigan medical center
d) University of tennessee medical center
d) University of tennessee medical center
How many minutes did she have to sit with her mother's dead body before the funeral?
a) 15
b) 60
c) 30
d) 90
b) 60
From history and even up to the 1980’s people would cut off a small piece of themselves or a cadaver and turn it into elixirs to heal anything from bruises to epilepsy. Besides human elixirs, what was another crazy way people from history tried to heal themselves?
a) Inject saliva from others into the part that was hurt
b) Take full on baths in human blood
c) eat cadaver organs
d) a and b
e) all of the above
d) a and b
In 2001 a 47 year old biologist named Susan Wiigh-Masak founded a company called Promessa which seeks to replace cremation with ____ and then can be planted in the soil of a memorial bush or tree.
a) cremation 2.0
b) putting the cadaver through a wood chopper
c) freeze drying the dead bodies
d) none of the above
c) freeze drying the dead bodies
What are beating heart cadavers used for in the medical field?
a) heart transplants
b) organ transplants
c) experiments
d) nothing
e) weighing the soul
b) organ transplants
Besides books, where else has Mary Roach published her writing?
a) columns on salon.com
b) National Geographic
c) Vogue
d) b and c
e) all of the above
e) all of the above