Recording the many face of death at the Denbigh Asylum, 1848-1938.

The funeral was a symbolic event in Welsh society, and members of staff and relatives of patients at the Denbigh Asylum shared cultural assumptions about the importance of a final resting place for the body. Formal procedures following the death of a patient were governed by asylum rules and regulations. A Denbigh the asylum chaplain played an important role, both in terms of ministering to the dying and I performing the funeral ceremony.

A difficult conversation? The views and experiences of parents and professionals on the consent process for perinatal postmortem after stillbirth.

Objective: To describe the experiences, knowledge and views of both parents and professionals regarding the consent process for perinatal postmortem.

Design: Internet-based survey.

Setting: Obstetricians, midwives and perinatal pathologists currently working in the UK.

An event in medical life, or the advent of a belief?

Freud's ambivalent relations with medicine are well known. Based on his relatively unknown text, A religious experience, published in 1928, the authors present an analysis of the internal reasons for this conflict. Responding to a letter from an American doctor, who tells him about his reactions to an autopsy and the influence it had on his religious faith, Freud suggests an analysis that leads him to make a surprising slip.

Factors associated with physician agreement and coding choices of cause of death using verbal autopsies for 1130 maternal deaths in India.

Background: The Indian Sample Registration System (SRS) with verbal autopsy methods provides estimations of cause specific mortality for maternal deaths, where the majority of deaths occur at home, unregistered. We aim to examine factors that influence physician agreement and coding choices in assigning causes of death from verbal autopsies.

Methodology/principal Findings: Among adult deaths identified in the SRS, pregnancy-related deaths recorded in 2001-2003 were assigned ICD-10 codes by two independent physicians.

[Autopsies of the real: resurrecting the dead].

The sense of the real, or the material - the dead body - as an inextricable part of the sacred does not disappear in the secular environment of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article analyzes specific humanitarian narratives centered on the practice of autopsy and mummification, in which the traces of Catholicism act as a kind of spectral discourse of the imagination, where the real is configured in forms of the uncanny, the monstrous or the sacred.

[The anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp: The beginning of a medical utopia].

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp was painted by Rembrandt Harmen-szoon van Rijn at the early age of 26 years. In the XVII century these paintings were very popular in the Netherlands, and in this country the cities flourished as cultural centers searching the anatomy knowledge.

Origin and development of forensic medicine in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The medicolegal death investigation system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is unique in the world. It is exclusively derived from Islamic judiciary based on Shari'ah law, which is the definitive Islamic law or doctrine. This law is applied on Saudi citizens as well as foreigners.

Family and community concerns about post-mortem needle biopsies in a Muslim society.

Background: Post-mortem needle biopsies have been used in resource-poor settings to determine cause of death and there is interest in using them in Bangladesh. However, we did not know how families and communities would perceive this procedure or how they would decide whether or not to consent to a post-mortem needle biopsy. The goal of this study was to better understand family and community concerns and decision-making about post-mortem needle biopsies in this low-income, predominantly Muslim country in order to design an informed consent process.

Communicating with the coroner: how religion, culture, and family concerns may influence autopsy decision making.

Based on coronial data gathered in the state of Queensland in 2004, this article reviews how a change in legislation may have impacted autopsy decision making by coroners. More specifically, the authors evaluated whether the requirement that coronial autopsy orders specify the level of invasiveness of an autopsy to be performed by a pathologist was affected by the further requirement that coroners take into consideration a known religion, culture, and/or raised family concern before making such an order. Preliminary data reveal that the cultural status of the deceased did not affect coronial autopsy decision making.

The role of coronial autopsies in a context of decreasing hospital autopsies: an investigation of the issues.

This article scrutinises the argument that decreasing hospital autopsy rates are outside the control of medical personnel, based as they are on families' unwillingness to consent to autopsy procedures, and that, as a consequence, the coronial autopsy is the appropriate alternative to the important medical and educational role of the autopsy It makes three points which are well supported by the research. First, that while hospital autopsy rates are decreasing, they have been doing so for more than 60 years, and issues beyond the simple notion of consent, like funding formulae in hospitals, increased technology and fear of litigation by doctors are all playing their part in this decline. Secondly, the issue of consent has as much to do with families not being approached as with families declining to give consent.

Perceptions, knowledge, incentives, and barriers of brain donation among African American elders enrolled in an Alzheimer's research program.

Purpose: To learn about African American older adults' knowledge and perceptions of brain donation, factors that relate to participating or not participating in a brain donation research program, and methods to increase African American brain donation commitment rates in the context of an Alzheimer's disease (AD) research program.

Design And Methods: African American older adults (n = 15) from the Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Core Center participant research registry enrolled in 1 of 2 focus groups of 90 min about brain donation. Seven participants were selected for a third follow-up focus group.

Autopsy: Traditional Jewish laws and customs "Halacha".

Judaism has many traditions, customs, rules, and laws, which relate to the proper and ethical disposition of a decedent when a Medical Examiner/ Coroner is involved. In almost all United States jurisdictions, statutes mandate the need to determine the cause and manner of death (Coroners' Act PA Pl. 323, num.

Mandatory autopsies and organ conscription.

Laws requiring autopsies have generated little controversy. Yet it is considered unconscionable to take organs without consent for transplantation. We think an organ draft is justified if mandatory autopsies are.

[Death after refusing treatment--causality assessment using the example of a Jehovah's Witness].

A 39-year-old man and Jehova's Witness suffered a complex pelvic fracture in an accident at work. He died 17 days later from fulminant pulmonary embolism. For religious reasons he had refused blood transfusions which would have been necessary for an early surgical stabilization of the pelvic fracture.

Attitude of nursing staff toward organ donation in a Spanish hospital with a solid-organ transplant program.

Context: Nursing personnel are fundamental in the organ donation and transplantation process, and their attitude toward donation has a decisive effect on patients, patients' families, and the general public.

Objective: To analyze the attitudes of nursing personnel toward donation in a transplant hospital and the factors that determine those attitudes.

Materials And Methods: A random sample of 305 nurses in different hospital services was taken and stratified by type of service.