The Chick and the Dead

by Carla Valentine

  I stopped thinking about that. Instead, I pulled her skin up and over the top of her open skull so she looked complete again and I could access her eyes. Then, after opening her eyelids wide with the fingers of one hand, with the other I took the needle and slid it sideways into the white of the eyeball – the sclera. The needle was horizontal and I could actually see it enter the eye via the clear lens; see it slide beneath the pupil. I then pulled on the syringe plunger to aspirate about two millilitres of the clear jelly known as vitreous humor, which is just one of the eye’s components, along with aqueous humor, which has a more liquid consistency. Aqueous is replenished constantly but vitreous remains unchanged, so if there are drugs or other foreign bodies trapped in it they will stay there unless removed manually. That’s why it’s a valuable substance for toxicology testing. It also resists putrefaction longer than other body fluids and can even be examined after the deceased has been embalmed. I repeated the process with a different syringe on the other eye, and the samples of vitreous, along with others such as blood and urine, were ready to be sent to the toxicologist. Only then would we know if our patient was full of some unknown poison.

  * * *

  When I studied toxicology at university, I learned all about poisons. Absolutely anything can be a poison, even water; it all depends on what the dosage is. Paracelsus wrote about this in the sixteenth century and his words are often condensed into the Latin phrase sola dosis facit venenum, which means ‘the dose makes the poison’. However, when we think of poisons and toxins we think of substances of abuse or classic stories of Agatha Christie-style villains administering strychnine, arsenic and cyanide. We think of inexorable, indiscriminate powders and liquids taking control of bodies and carrying out their dark deeds until the host is dead.

  I was being poisoned.

  Nearly every night I was receiving angry diatribes from Sebastian’s common-law wife telling me secrets about him (via voicemail, since I never answered my phone), and although I didn’t want to listen I couldn’t help myself – it was a dark addiction. She was blurting out tales of how they’d been on family holidays, which explained those missing days, and the fact he’d taken her to see a show on my birthday – with tickets he said he’d bought for me. That was why he never contacted me about my surgery that day; once he realised I was in surgery he took her instead! She said how much he loved her because he had bought her a necklace from Tiffany’s, but when she described it I knew it was the same one he’d bought me, too. It all just made me feel sick. Her words slid into my ear and entered my head like a black fungus, its mycelium hungry for more of my delicate pink brain matter, and once it had a grip I just didn’t have the strength to fight it.

  I did my work every morning on autopilot then on my lunch break, rather than eating, I drifted up to the hospital chapel like some pale spectre and lay on a pew for my designated hour. I went up there for the quiet; a sense of peace. I usually got it, but one day the Irish chaplain, Patrick, who I’d dealt with before for Catholic baby funerals, noticed that there was something very wrong with me as I lay horizontally, clutching my cold rosary against my forehead.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ he asked, softly. ‘It’s a stupid question, I know.’

  I liked Patrick. He was a chaplain who wore a leather jacket and rode a motorcycle which made him cool in my books, as far as men of the cloth go.

  I answered with a question: ‘Have you ever felt that you’ve been close to someone who has done such filthy things that it’s somehow rubbed off on you and become a part of you – that you can never be clean?’

  I don’t think he was prepared for that, but he said, after a pause, ‘With God’s help, you can always be cleansed. The mere fact of being in the presence of His grace can cleanse you.’

  I thought about that for a moment but then, without saying a word, I put my rosary back in my scrubs pocket and headed back down to the mortuary.

  It was that night I began compulsively bathing. I just didn’t think I’d ever feel clean.

  Pretty ironic, given that I’d spent all my adult life with the dead and knew about many cultures which have a ‘taboo on the dead’, whereby those who come into contact with the deceased are somehow ‘unclean’. Sigmund Freud discussed this phenomenon, saying it exists because of ‘the fear of the presence or of the return of the dead person’s ghost’, but this particular taboo has been around since long before Freud. In the Bible, the book of Numbers, chapter 19, verse 11 states ‘The one who touches the corpse of any person shall be unclean for seven days’, and verse 13 ‘Anyone who touches a corpse, the body of a man who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord.’ Haggai, chapter 2, verse 13, elaborates: ‘“If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these (bread, wine, oil) will the latter become unclean?” And the priests answered, “It will become unclean.”’

  And it’s not just physical touching that causes problems: tribes such as the Tuareg in the Sahara fear the return of the dead so much they move their camp after a death and never speak the dead person’s name. They wash the dead in the place they died, cover them in tree branches and the spot is considered a tomb for months. Similarly, there is a taboo on mourners and widows: the living should avoid them at all costs, lest they die themselves or suffer some awful fate. Even as recently as 2015, in Mumbai, around twenty-five Parsees, normally employed in jobs as varied as plumber and businessman, volunteered to work as khandias (pallbearers) because of an upcoming strike with the existing khandia workforce. An article commented, ‘This is surprising considering the stigma attached to the profession – few Parsees are willing to marry khandias and orthodox members treat them as “untouchables”.’

  In an odd inversion to all these beliefs, the dead I was fine with – they’d never caused me any harm. It took a relationship with someone very much alive to make me feel tainted.

  * * *

  I felt like Tina was more understanding of my situation than the rest of the team and when she surprised me one day by asking, ‘How do you fancy a day away from the mortuary to learn a new skill?’ I replied, ‘Sure,’ thinking, ‘Anything to get out of here and away from everything, even for one day.’

  ‘It’s the enucleation course taught up in North London,’ she continued. ‘I know you like taking vitreous so I thought you could stomach this.’

  Enucleation means removal of the eye and it’s something that some mortuary technicians learn, even though there are designated eye-removal specialists at most tissue retrieval banks. Tina was right – I liked the accuracy and challenge of vitreous removal so eye retrieval was right up my street, and it’s a real privilege to have a skill like that under your belt. It’s carried out so that an organ donor can give the gift of their corneas to people who have conditions such as recurring infections and perforations which gradually cause a loss of vision.

  So a few days later I was off to Hendon in North London. I used a fairly realistic plastic model called OSILA to practise removal techniques: the model face had fake optic nerves and various oblique and rectus muscles made of rubber and was as realistic as possible, even containing jelly-like slippery eyeballs and a conjunctiva. Like an ‘alternative’ Girl Guide, I coveted the certificate I received at the end of the day which told me I’d ‘passed’. What a great skill to have and to put on my CV – and to bring up inappropriately at dinner parties! If only there was such a thing as an APT sash and we all earned patches for our achievements! I would have just earned the ‘eye patch’.

  * * *

  One very interesting post-mortem artefact of the eye is something known as tache noire de la sclérotique, meaning ‘black spots of the eye’ and often referred to as ‘tache noire’ for short. This occurs when the deceased’s eyes are left slightly open and the sclera (the white part) becomes partially discoloured as it oxidises and dries out, usually around seven to eight hours after death. Rather than black spots, though, the exposed part of the eye becomes a red-brown line, as the delicate tissu
e succumbs to what’s known as exposure keratitis. Because it looks like a rust-coloured straight line it’s important to understand this phenomenon as a trained professional or it could easily be mistaken for some sort of injury or haemorrhage. A corneal transplant is usually rendered impossible by this damage unless the keratitis affects just the sclera and not the cornea; in that case it may be possible. So that’s one of the reasons it’s important to close the eyes of the deceased. Although it’s said that as a matter of tradition coins were placed on the eyes of the dead to stop them reflecting on the living and passing on the condition, as well as to pay the Ferryman in Hades, it’s also just highly practical.

  * * *

  I tried to keep the personal problems I was having away from the workplace and continued to run around the mortuary at St Martin’s like a headless chicken. Keeping busy seemed to be the only thing keeping me sane.

  There’s a famous case of a headless chicken that lived for well over a year. In 1945, in Colorado, farmer Lloyd Olsen was assigned the task by his wife of killing one of the brood for supper, but he didn’t quite chop the head off properly and left some of the jugular vein as well as most of the bird’s brain stem intact. Because of this the chicken, who was called Mike, was able to walk clumsily, balance on a perch and even attempt to crow, although the noise apparently came out as a hideous gurgling sound. Olsen decided to feed Mike with tiny grains of corn, as well as a mixture of milk and water via an eyedropper, to keep him alive. He exhibited him in carnivals for the eighteen months that Mike ‘lived’ and made himself a lot of money, but the creature unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you view such a horrible existence) died one night after choking on a kernel of corn.

  I’m often asked if I’ve ever autopsied someone who has been beheaded, and if the process works the other way round. Of course, humans cannot live without a head, but there remains a curiosity as to whether or not the head, once decapitated, is still sentient – at least for a short while.

  In Paris, in April 1792, the infamous guillotine was used for the first human execution after a couple of weeks of trials on animals and corpses. It was named after Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who did not actually invent the instrument – many other beheading apparatuses had existed for years, including the Italian ‘Mannaia’ (cleaver), the Scottish ‘Maiden’ and the Halifax ‘Gibbet’ – but Guillotin supported its use as he believed decapitation was a much more humane way to bring about instantaneous death. It therefore became the preferred form of capital punishment. Hanging, used in pre-revolutionary France, on the other hand, was fraught with problems. There were several different methods of judicial hanging but the ‘Long Drop’ or ‘Measured Drop’ became the standard method in the UK as it was considered the most humane. Unlike earlier methods, this one took the person’s height and weight into consideration. It meant that the rope was the right length to ensure a correct and speedy hanging, but it didn’t result in the decapitation of the victim which, ironically, occurred frequently, even in France. So the guillotine was perceived to be more merciful as it delivered an immediate death without risk of suffocation.

  However, three years after the guillotine’s debut a letter, written by the eminent German anatomist Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, was published in the Paris Moniteur, which stated:

  Do you know that it is not at all certain when a head is severed from the body by the guillotine that the feelings, personality and ego are instantaneously abolished…? Don’t you know that the seat of the feelings and appreciation is in the brain, that this seat of consciousness can continue to operate even when the circulation of the blood is cut off from the brain…? Thus, for as long as the brain retains its vital force the victim is aware of his existence … Credible witnesses have assured me that they have seen the teeth grind after the head has been separated from the trunk.

  The medical community was in a panic as stories of this disturbing phenomenon spread like wildfire. After Charlotte Corday was guillotined for murdering the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat in his bath, the executioner slapped her cheek while holding her severed head aloft. Witnesses claimed ‘the cheeks reddened and the face looked indignant’. (I think I would too if I’d just been executed and the cherry on top of the cake was a slap.) According to another tale, when the heads of two rivals in the National Assembly were placed in a sack following execution, one bit the other so badly the two couldn’t be separated.

  While it is true that the brain can stay oxygenated by the blood within it for up to twelve seconds after decapitation, it isn’t quite so cut and dried as to whether that brain retains conscious thoughts. Gruesome experiments were carried out on animals and criminals in an attempt to answer the question once and for all, but no real evidence emerged that one decapitated head could indeed bite another. Scientists now believe that the huge drop in cerebral blood pressure would cause a victim to lose consciousness in a few seconds, so hopefully a few seconds is quick enough …

  I find it interesting that the innocent attraction, Madame Tussaud’s Waxwork Museum, began due to these beheadings. In the 1790s a lack of media meant that most of the population didn’t know what the aristocracy looked like, unlike today when their images are everywhere. So the talented Marie Tussaud, after escaping execution by guillotine herself owing to her artistic skills, was employed to collect the heads and make plaster casts of them which she subsequently used to make wax models. Eventually, after escaping France, she took them on a travelling exhibition and finally settled at her famous Marylebone Road location.

  * * *

  Not only casts and waxworks, but heads themselves, have been a commodity throughout history. Examples include kapala, ritual skull cups made from ornately decorated human calvaria and used commonly in Tibet, and the mainly Amazonian practice of shrunken heads. One particularly contentious form of head trading occurred in New Zealand in the early 1800s, around the time of the European invasion. At this time some Maori tribe members – women and men – had their faces tattooed and incised with what is known as moko. These distinct markings identified the tribe members, particularly if their heads had been severed, and the preservation of these heads after death became an important part of Maori post-mortem culture. After the brain and eyes had been removed and the orifices sealed, the heads were boiled or steamed, then smoked over a fire and left out to dry in the sun. The result was a mummified head with the moko beautifully preserved. These mokomokai would be brought out of safekeeping for important occasions, and the invading Europeans began to trade their muskets for them. Before long, owing to their intricate beauty, they were a desired commodity for people travelling from the West. When the supply of genuine heads diminished as a result, mokomokai had to be ‘created’. Unfortunately, for many slaves this was the only way in which they would receive the moko: they were tattooed, allowed to heal, then promptly beheaded and their heads treated in the way described above to be sold on as chiefs to unsuspecting collectors.

  An amusing exchange is documented by Frederick Maning in his book Old New Zealand. He thought he had stumbled into a circle of Maori who were nodding to him in greeting. It turned out to be mokomokai bobbing on fabric-swathed sticks in the gentle breeze. As this realisation hit him, he heard a voice from behind:

  ‘Looking at the ’eds, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said I, turning round just the least thing quicker than ordinary.

  ‘’Eds has been a-getting scarce,’ says he.

  ‘I should think so,’ says I.

  ‘We an’t ’ad a ’ed this long time,’ says he.

  ‘The devil!’ says I.

  ‘One o’ them ’eds has been hurt bad,’ says he.

  ‘I should think all were, rather so,’ says I.

  ‘Oh no; only one of ’em,’ says he. ‘The skull is split, and it won’t fetch nothin’,’ says he.

  ‘Oh, murder! I see, now,’ says I.

  ‘’Eds was werry scarce,’ says he, shaking his own ‘’ed’.

  ‘Ah,’ said I.
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  ‘They had to tattoo a slave a bit ago,’ says he, ‘and the villain ran away, tattooin’ an’ all!’ says he.

  ‘What?’ said I.

  ‘Bolted afore he was fit to kill,’ says he.

  ‘Stole off with his own head?’ says I.

  ‘That’s just it,’ says he.

  ‘Capital felony!’ says I.

  I walked away, pretty smartly. ‘Loose notions about heads in this country,’ said I to myself.

  Although this is a comical dialogue, the traffic in these once-revered objects did become a public scandal, on a par with the modern Alder Hey scandal, when it became known that the practice had cost many innocent people their lives. An act made their repellent trade illegal in 1831. Now, museums in England do what they can to repatriate these remains to their country of origin.

  * * *

  In Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé, based on the short biblical tale from Mark 6:21–29, the arrogant and passionate princess Salomé demands the head of the prophet John the Baptist (Jokanaan) on a silver platter. She wants him beheaded because he will not kiss her: he is a holy man and sees her lust for him as something dirty and unholy, and he doesn’t want her to taint him. The decapitation is her revenge. As she holds his severed head in front of her face, she declares, ‘Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now’, and other sexually charged taunts which go on for many lyrical lines.

  The reason I know this story is fictional is because Salome, back in the days when tricep dips and bicep curls were not common practice for young princesses, would not have had the upper-body strength to keep holding a human head in front of her face long enough to have a lengthy conversation with it.

  And I know that because I’ve held a decapitated head in my hands.

  Many years ago, when I was at the Municipal Mortuary, I spent some time over at the local hospital facility with Jason, in order to train for forensic post-mortems. They were held there because their mortuary was much bigger than ours and had specific equipment for these special cases, such as a viewing gallery from which police could watch autopsies without getting ‘dirty’, and CCTV for evidence purposes. When we arrived at about two in the afternoon I was surprised to see so many people there: the pathologist going over video footage and photographs of the crime scene with the senior investigating officer (SIO) and several other police colleagues, the photographer and assistant setting up their equipment, and all the exhibits officers and note-takers preparing for the arduous examination. Once the body bag was opened – this has to be done on film, with witnesses, to establish chain of evidence – I was even more surprised to see that the deceased had no head. Scratch that: on further inspection he did have a head, but as it was separate from his body it had been placed between his legs in an attempt to stop it rolling around in the bag. It seemed completely logical, although it was an odd experience to have someone staring at me from below their own genitals. The urge to pick it up and move it into the correct anatomical position was strong but I wasn’t able to touch anything yet – not until everyone was ready to begin the autopsy.