Club marks Darwin’s birthday with discussion of cadavers

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Charles Darwin items are for sale as people mingle during the Fourteenth Annual IUN Darwin Day at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Ind. Wednesday February 15, 2012. | Stephanie Dowell~Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 17, 2012 10:22AM

GARY — Serenity Price has learned a lot about humans in the four years she’s been an anthropology student at Indiana University Northwest, but cadavers and where they came from hadn’t crossed her mind, exactly.

Fortunately, Charles Darwin’s extreme dislike of cutting into and studying the human body led to a wonderful discussion about it Wednesday during the Anthropology Club’s 14th Annual Darwin Day Wednesday in the campus library. And Price, a senior who coordinated the event, walked away fascinated.

“We never heard much of their use, but it applied well to the theory of evolution,” she said during a program break where students, faculty and the community at large snacked on birthday cake for what would have been the scientist’s 203rd birthday Feb. 12.

Anthropology has four components: culture, language, history and human biostructure, making it the most holistic of the social sciences, she said. Darwin, with his theory of evolution, naturally contributed mightily in the biological aspects.

But what of cadavers, especially since Darwin was appalled by them and actually quit medical school because of it? Ernest Tallarico, head of Indiana University School of Medicine Northwest Campus and pioneer of modern dissection practices, said cadavers played a huge role in his theories nevertheless.

He also said the practices throughout the ages were neither sanitary nor refined.

“Twelfth-century Arabians would take their cadavers, encase them in stone coffins and, while they wouldn’t embalm them, they would coat them in sugar,” Tallarico said. “After awhile, the body became a confection that was used as a medicine.”

Tallarico found pictures from the late 1800s of surgeons operating on a patients with tuberculosis without benefit of gloves or masks.

The crude practices over the ages have led to curriculum reform today, where cadavers are now treated as patients, he said.

Other lectures during the celebration included the evolution of disgust and its role in dehumanizing others, how recognizing more basic farming skills can lead to better technologies to improve food production and Lake Michigan’s impact through time.

Erin Argyilan, an associate geosciences professor, said the Great Lakes provide 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, but with changing landscapes driven by both man and nature, the situation has the potential to change dramatically.

Plus, people can see how glaciers had an impact on the region by just looking at the land around them.

“You can drive down Ridge Road and see houses on hills. Those hills are dunes created by the Laurentide Ice Sheet,” Argylian said.