Lectures on Tap - "How Body Snatching Helped Build Modern Medicine"
About this Event
📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email
🧠 Lecture: "How Body Snatching Helped Build Modern Medicine"
🎤 Speaker: James Henry
Modern medicine was born in the shadows of the graveyard, built on a grisly trade of illegal body snatching for dissection—and Massachusetts was at the heart of it all. From the cobblestones of Boston to early medical schools across the Commonwealth, graves were plundered for over a century to satisfy an insatiable demand for anatomical study.
Body snatchers targeted community burying grounds, igniting public outrage and explosive anatomy riots across New England. But this dark trade never truly vanished; it evolved. Today, old sack-and-shovel ghouls have been replaced by modern body brokers who harvest and sell illicit human remains, where medicine meets true crime.
Certified NYC tour guide James Henry has spent nearly a decade bringing the city’s dead back to life. A specialist in American Garden cemeteries, he is a veteran guide and programmer for Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, with additional work at Evergreens Cemetery, Bowery Boys Walks, and Atlas Obscura. When he isn’t leading crowds through historic burial grounds, he’s crafting his upcoming graphic novel about the global history of body snatching.
Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌
Agenda
6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.
6:55 PM – Host introduction
7:00 PM – Lecture begins
7:45 PM – Audience Q&A
8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round
8:30 PM – Wrap up.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 39.19
