Autopsy - History

History

The term "autopsy" derives from the Ancient Greek autopsia, "to see for oneself", derived from αυτος (autos, "oneself") and όψις (opsis, "eye"). Around 3000 BC ancient Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to practice the removal and examination of the internal organs of humans in the religious practice of mummification.

Autopsies that opened the body to determine the cause of death were attested at least in the early third millennium BC, although they were opposed in many ancient societies where it was believed that the outward disfigurement of dead persons prevented them from entering the afterlife (as with the Egyptians, who removed the organs through tiny slits in the body). Notable Greek autopsists were Erasistratus and Herophilus of Chalcedon, who lived in 3rd century BC Alexandria, but in general, autopsies were rare in ancient Greece. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar was the subject of an official autopsy after his murder by rival senators, the physician's report noting that the second stab wound Caesar received was the fatal one. By around 150 BC, ancient Roman legal practice had established clear parameters for autopsies.

The dissection of human remains for medical reasons continued to be practiced irregularly after the Romans, for instance by the Arab physicians Avenzoar and Ibn al-Nafis, but the modern autopsy process derives from the anatomists of the Renaissance. Giovanni Morgagni (1682–1771), celebrated as the father of anatomical pathology, wrote the first exhaustive work on pathology, De Sedibus et Causis Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis (The Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy, 1769).

The great 19th-century medical researcher Rudolf Virchow, in response to a lack of standardization of autopsy procedures, established and published specific autopsy protocols (one such protocol still bears his name).