Morgues and such

The image at the top is a group of medical students gathered around the cadaver they are dissecting. It is in a new book that I ordered minutes after I heard about it and only a couple of hours before my sister also clued me in. I own two similar photographs. In one of them, the students are wearing smocks bearing the year of their graduation, and with the photo was a graduation invitation. I made the mistake of letting the two get separated, but intend to reunite them when I put my Museum back together.

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The second image is compliments of new follower Carrie, who writes, "I don't know if you have ever seen the photography of Shaun O'Boyle. I came across his work looking up the old Buffalo psychiatric hospital since I'm from Buffalo (now living in Glasgow, Scotland) and used drive past that gorgeous old building all the time." The photos are beautiful and haunting and the artist's statement can be read here.

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The third image was published in Harper's Weekly in 1874. The Paris morgue was a popular amusement and tourist attraction in the 19th c., and was on the visitor's itinerary along with the Eiffel Tower. The word morgue itself is directly from French:

morgue
"mortuary," 1821, from Fr. Morgue, originally a specific building in Paris where bodies were exposed for identification; originally the place where new prisoners were displayed to keepers to establish their identification. Probably from morgue "haughtiness," originally "a sad expression, solemn look," from O.Fr. morguer "look solemnly," from V.L. *murricare "to make a face, pout," from *murrum "muzzle, snout."

According to other definitions, a morgue is a place where corpses are awaiting identification and a mortuary is where corpses are awaiting funeralization.