人類對屍體做的十大怪事(上)

When most of us die, a few tears might be shed over our bodies. Within a few days, we will likely be buried or cremated, our physical form reduced to a mere memory. But some of us will continue on in our adventures. Below is a collection of stories about corpses that eschewed tradition, from crash test dummies to bodies that became drug paraphernalia.

我們大多數人死的時候, 人們可能只會灑一些眼淚灑在我們身上。幾天之內, 屍體就可能會被埋葬或火化,身體的物理形式只幻化成了一個記憶。下面是與傳統方式截然不同的、有關人類屍體的故事集合, 從碰撞試驗假人到成爲吸毒用具的人的屍體……

ses Of Stone

10.石化屍體

Mankind has been taken with the idea of preserving corpses. The oldest known mummy is that of a child of the Chinchorro people, a prehistoric fishing culture that lived along the arid coast of present-day Chile and Peru. It was carbon dated to approximately 5050 B.C., long before the Egyptians began their practice.

人類一直有保存屍體的想法。已知最早的木乃伊是新克羅人的一個孩子，他們誕生於史前釣魚文明，生活在現在乾旱的智利和祕魯沿岸。從碳測試中可以追溯到公元前5050年，早在埃及人開始他們的木乃伊實踐之前。

Born in 1792, Italian anatomist Girolamo Segato was rather obsessed with Egyptian funerary practices. He went on several archaeological expeditions to Egypt, where he became intimately acquainted with the process of mummification. Upon his return to Italy, Segato unveiled an extraordinary technique of preserving flesh—artificial petrifaction. According to pioneering American surgeon Valentine Mott, who spent some time in Europe in the company of Segato, the Italian "had discovered a chemical process by which he could actually petrify, in very short time, every animal substance, preserving permanently, and with minute accuracy, its form and internal texture, and in such a state of stony hardness that it could be sawed into slabs and elegantly polished!" Segato died in 1836, destroying all his notes before his passing. His collection of preserved remains was scattered, with the largest concentration located at the Museum of the Department of Anatomy in Florence. Despite extensive study, Segato's petrification method remains a mystery to this day.

生於1792年,意大利解剖學家Girolamo Segato相當癡迷於埃及葬禮習俗。他曾數次去埃及考古探險,在那裏他熟悉了木乃伊製造的整個過程。回到意大利後, Segato揭示了一個保存肉體的非凡技術——人工石化。先驅者美國的外科醫生瓦倫丁·莫特，他在歐洲的Segato公司工作過一段時間，他認爲Segato這個意大利人"發現了一種在很短的時間內可以真正實現石化的化學過程，任何動物的物質，都可以永久地保存它的形狀和內部結構，而且伴隨着時間的精準，在這樣石頭般堅硬的狀態下，它可以鋸成板和輕柔地拋光"。Segato在1836年去世，死前銷燬了他所有的筆記。他的遺稿仍然散落各處，其中最多的收藏在佛羅倫薩解剖教研室的博物館裏。儘管進行了廣泛的研究， Segato 的石化法在今天仍然是一個謎。

led Corpses

9.醃製屍體

A half century before the Panama Canal was constructed, a railway was built to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The chief inspiration for this project was the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the mad rush to stake a claim to fortune. Men came from across the globe to work on the railway, many without any identification or known next of kin.

巴拿馬運河建好的前半世紀，曾修建了一條鐵路來連接大西洋和太平洋。建造的靈感主要來自1849年的加州淘金熱，人們狂奔着索要財富。世界各地的人前來建造鐵路，許多人身份不明也沒有已知的近親。

This feat of engineering would come at great cost to many—diseases like yellow fever, malaria, and cholera plagued the workers, and thousands died. A ban on opium caused many of the Chinese workers, who had become addicted to the drug in their homeland, to commit suicide. No official records were kept, but the death toll could have easily exceeded 10,000. It might seem natural that the Panama Railroad Company would simply bury their dead and move on, but they had other plans. Keeping their eye on the bottom line, they pickled many of the corpses and sold them off to medical schools for experimentation. It was an exciting time in medicine—anesthesia had just been discovered, and surgeries, which had previously been hack jobs performed as swiftly as possible, became far more intricate. Bodies were in high demand, and for over five years, the Panama Railroad Company was a leading supplier.

這一工程付出了極大地代價——疾病，如黃熱病，瘧疾以及霍亂困擾着工人，造成了數千人的死亡。鴉片禁令引來了許多中國工人，他們在自己的國家沉迷於鴉片，試圖自殺。官方的記錄沒有被保留，但死亡人數可以很容易判斷超過了1萬。巴拿馬鐵路公司只會埋葬死者，繼續前進，這似乎很自然，但他們有其他的計劃。他們醃了許多屍體，然後賣給醫學院做實驗。那是一個醫學極度活躍的年代——麻醉方纔發現，手術，已被當時的黑市醫生儘可能迅速地進行，變得更爲複雜。屍體需求量劇增，五年來，巴拿馬鐵路公司是領先的屍體供應商。

se Bongs

8.屍體做成的煙筒

Those given to the frequent consumption of marijuana are rarely lauded for the motivation. But potheads tend to have the engineering prowess of MacGyver when it comes to manufacturing smoking implements, utilizing everything from apples to soda cans. In 2008, three teens in Humble, Texas used a truly ghoulish method to get high. They dug up the grave of a child named Willie Simms who'd died in 1921, severed the corpse's head, and used the skull as a bong.

那些頻繁消費大麻的人很少因其動機而獲得稱讚。但當涉及到製造吸菸工具時，癮君子往往有馬蓋先工程技術般的力量，利用一切資源，從蘋果到汽水罐。2008年，在德克薩斯的Humble, 有三個少年用一種極爲殘忍的方法達到了製作吸菸工具的極致。他們挖了一個死於1921年，名叫威利·西姆斯的孩子的墳墓，切斷了屍體的頭顱，將它用作大麻煙筒。

The teens may very well have gotten away with this gruesome crime if they hadn't later been caught during a vehicle break-in investigation. One of them confessed to desecrating Simms's corpse. At first, the story seemed so bizarre that the police did not believe it, but a visit to the cemetery yielded a disturbed grave filled with rainwater, its headstone broken. All three were charged with abuse of a corpse, a misdemeanor, along with other crimes.

如果不是因爲汽車非法闖入遭到調查，這些青少年很可能逃脫這可怕的罪行。其中一個供認褻瀆了西姆斯的屍體。起初,警察不相信這個離奇的故事,但探查發現墓地受雨水的沖刷很嚴重，墓碑也被打破，他們纔不得不信。這三個少年被控告虐待屍體,一個獲輕罪,連同其他兩個重度犯罪。

Unclaimed Corpse Indicator

7.無人認領的屍體指標

Funerals can be extraordinarily expensive. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, a traditional funeral and burial can easily approach $10,000. Even a comparatively cheap cremation exceeds $3,000.

葬禮可能是非常昂貴的。據全國殯葬董事協會所說，傳統的殯葬可以輕易地花費近1萬美元，即使是相對便宜的火化也超出了3000美元。

In 2009, when the economy was in dire straits, cities across America reported a vast increase in unclaimed bodies, an indicator that the financial outlook of the nation was indeed grim. Los Angeles experienced a 36 percent rise in unclaimed dead over the previous fiscal year. Even in the most dire financial circumstances, most deceased are claimed by their loved ones, but in certain circumstances, it can be seen how a body could go unclaimed. Faced with the choice, would an impoverished single mother take on the staggering debt of burying a great uncle she'd never met? One of the cities hardest hit by this phenomenon was Detroit, an area plagued by unemployment and poverty. Here, the state of Michigan pays for indigent burials, which cost $750 each. Unfortunately, these payments were rarely timely, as the state struggled through its own financial woes. Meanwhile, the unclaimed bodies piled up in refrigerated storage rooms. In October and November 2008, Michigan paid for 637 indigent burials. A year later, the economy tanked so badly that this number nearly doubled, swelling to 1,268 in the same time period.

2009年，當時經濟正處於水深火熱之中，美國各地的城市無人認領屍體的報告大量增加，這是該國的財政前景確實嚴峻的一個指標。洛杉磯無人認領的屍體比上一財年上漲了36％。即使在最糟糕的金融環境下，大多數死者都是會被自己的親人認領的，但在某些情況下，可以看到屍體是如何無人認領的。面臨選擇，一個貧困的單身母親如何承擔驚人的債務去埋葬一個她從未見過的叔叔？這種現象的重災區是底特律，一個飽受失業和貧窮困擾的城市。這裏，密歇根州支付貧困墓葬，每個花費750美元。不幸的是，這些款項是很少能及時到賬，因爲州政府掙扎在自身的財務困境中。同時，無人認領的屍體在冷凍儲藏室堆放。在2008年的10月和11月裏，密歇根州支持了637項貧困墓葬。一年後，經濟重挫極爲糟糕，這個數字卻幾乎翻了一倍，在同一個時期暴漲到1268。

ey Mountford, The Jilted Bride

6.奧黛麗·芒福德，被拋棄的新娘

One of Charles Dickens's most celebrated works is the novel Great Expectations, in which a boy is subjected to the sinister machinations of a jilted bride. Real life has its own strange tales of jilted brides, including Australian Audrey Mountford. Audrey fell in love with a Canadian man, and the two planned to marry. However, their union was not to be. Heartbroken, she left her home in Sydney in 1969.

查爾斯·狄更斯最著名的作品之一是小說《遠大前程》,一個男孩被一個被拋棄的新娘欺負。現實生活中也有被拋棄的新娘的離奇故事,包括澳大利亞的奧黛麗·芒福德。奧黛麗愛上了一個加拿大人, 並且兩人計劃結婚。然而, 他們的結合沒有成功。傷心中, 她在1969年離開了悉尼的家。

Mountford frequently traveled and was described by her family as "flighty," so though they looked for her, they didn't worry that anything was amiss. It was believed that she had gone overseas to recover from the failed relationship. However, a teenager discovered her remains in a cave in Australia's Blue Mountains in 1981. She wore her mother's wedding ring and was surrounded by various items like toothpaste and utensils. The body could not be identified, and the case was dropped in 1983. A coroner's inquiry in July 2009 finally confirmed the fate of Audrey Mountford. Her family was devastated by the news. Her younger sister, 84-year-old Nola Stewart, had been the last family member to see Audrey alive. She said, "Actually it saddens me more to find out what happened to her because I thought that she was living somewhere and not bothering to get back in touch with me."

芒福德經常旅行，她的家人形容她爲"輕浮"，雖然他們會尋找她，但他們從不擔心有什麼不對勁。他們只是認爲她已經去了國外，試圖從失敗的戀情中恢復過來。然而，1981年，一個少年在澳大利亞藍山的洞穴中發現了她的遺體。她戴着她媽媽的結婚戒指，周圍散落各種物品，如牙膏和餐具。屍體無法查明，案件在1983年被擱置。2009年7月，驗屍官的調查最終確定奧黛麗芒福德的命運。她的家庭被這個消息摧毀。她的妹妹，84歲的諾拉·斯圖爾特，是最後能看到奧黛麗活着的人。她說，"其實找出發生在她身上的事，這令我非常難過，因爲我一直以爲她住在某個地方，並沒有打算跟我聯繫。"

翻譯：喬夢月 來源：前十網