The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation

Content Warning: This section discusses the system of race-based slavery in the United States, the commodification of enslaved people, execution, sexual assault, rape, and trafficking in human corpses.

Dissection and autopsy are both scientific examinations of corpses.

Berry pays particular attention to the teaching and research practice of dissection, which examines a body by cutting it open to investigate the bones, organs, connective tissue, blood, and other features and functions of the body. Dissection is often used to teach anatomy. More advanced dissection may involve the study of abnormalities and diseases.

Autopsy also involves the opening up of a corpse for anatomical investigation, but rather than teaching anatomy, it aims to determine the cause of death of an individual. The pedagogical purpose of dissection is communal—to learn, in general, how a body of a particular species is put together and functions. Autopsy is not pedagogical because it is not aimed at teaching any generalities but, rather, determining specific causes of death. Thus, dissection is aimed at a general understanding of a species, while autopsy is aimed at a specific understanding of a particular individual’s death. Dissection removes itself from the individual, extrapolating out form a specific body to understand the species as a whole, while autopsy focuses on the individual, using anatomical knowledge of the species to understand the individual.