Susan Lederer, professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school, said that as the number of medical schools increased in the 19th century and dissection became an essential part of training, schools needed to find more cadavers.
States passed laws making unclaimed bodies, mostly of very poor people, available to medical schools.
“It reflects longstanding assumptions about the differences between middle-class and either working-class or underclass people” that it was deemed acceptable to turn certain bodies over but not others, she said.