Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Thursday 24 May 2018
Mississippi: Up to 7,000 bodies from asylum may be in field

By SARAH MEARHOFF, As- holtz said the blow could
sociated Press have caused permanent
STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) — brain damage. It's not clear
Some of the boxes stacked whether the blow came
inside anthropologist Molly before or after the patient
Zuckerman's laboratory was institutionalized.
contain full bones — a skull, One of Zuckerman's gradu-
a jaw, or a leg. Others con- ate students inspected
tain only plastic bags of cross-sections of bones
bone fragments that Zuck- to find evidence of pel-
erman describes as "grit." lagra, or vitamin B defi-
These humble remains are ciency. Likely a result of a
among as many as 7,000 diet of corn, fatback and
bodies that were buried at molasses, the condition
Mississippi's former insane can cause dementia-like
asylum, a site that's now symptoms. Skeletal remains
on the grounds of the Uni- can also show evidence of
versity of Mississippi Medi- In this May 9, 2018 photo taken in Starkville, Miss., Mississippi State University anthropologist Molly chronic disease. Syphilis in
cal Center in Jackson. Re- Zuckerman holds a portion of a mandible extracted from one of the graves unearthed at what its late stages, for instance,
searchers are planning to was the graveyard of the Mississippi State Asylum in Jackson, Miss. can cause small brain tu-
exhume the bodies, create mors that result in moth
a memorial and study them The Mississippi State Lunatic ic backgrounds appear to legacy and history and hole-like craters in the skull.
for insight on how mentally Asylum — later renamed have varied. scientific value." Didlake From teeth, anthropolo-
ill people and other margin- the Mississippi State Insane Pockets of remains had hopes to receive about $2 gists can gather informa-
alized populations should Hospital — operated from been found on the universi- million from Mississippi legis- tion on people's diets and
be treated today. 1855 to 1935 and housed ty's campus since the 1990s. lators for the project, after even discern what county
"The individuals present this up to 35,000 patients from But during a 2012 survey for which he believes private they're from.
amazing snapshot of life across the state. Patients planned road construc- donations will sustain it. Identifying the patients,
and health and human bi- who died while institution- tion, archaeologists made So far the exhumed remains though, is difficult. The cof-
ology in Mississippi during alized were buried there if the startling discovery that of 66 people are housed at fins are not marked. Anthro-
a really tumultuous time relatives didn't claim their there are at least 3,000 bur- Zuckerman's lab. Zucker- pologists have recovered
spanning from before the bodies. ied bodies — and possibly man said the patients were patient records, but there
Civil War into Reconstruc- While researchers have lim- as many as 7,000. laid to rest with respect in is no map to match records
tion and into Jim Crow," ited information on those A group of seven universi- individual coffins. Their un- to gravesites. DNA analysis
said Zuckerman, who op- buried at the site, Zucker- ties in Mississippi and Texas marked graves and lack of is costly, and DNA strands
erates her lab at Mississippi man said many suffered has created a consortium personal effects were com- can degrade beyond rec-
State University in Starkville. from syphilis and associ- to memorialize and ana- mon burial practices for the ognition after decades un-
"This can provide a very rich, ated mental symptoms at lyze the remains. time, she said. derground.
contextualized, detailed a time before antibiotics Ralph Didlake, the direc- In one box is a nearly full Karen Clark, who has stud-
and personal understand- were known as an effective tor of UMMC's Center for human skull from a young ied state records and her
ing of how health changed cure. Others' conditions Bioethics and Medical Hu- female patient, said As- family's genealogy, said
throughout time and how ranged from schizophre- manities, said the consor- sistant Professor Anna Os- her great-great-great-
people's health was influ- nia to postpartum depres- tium aims "to respectfully terholtz, pointing to three grandfather Isham Earnest
enced by structural factors sion in an era when mental manage the remains in a dents in the skull that came is buried at the site. She has
such as poverty and racism health wasn't well under- way that leverages their from traumatic impacts. no problem with the univer-
and marginalization." stood. Racial and econom- cultural value, honors their One is so severe that Oster- sity digging up the graves,
and she hopes DNA testing
could point her to her an-
cestor's remains.
"Why not use the latest
technology if it exists?" she
asked.
Zuckerman said studying
how the mentally ill were
treated in the asylum's era
will help researchers un-
derstand how to improve
treatment for marginal-
ized populations of today,
whether they're affected
by mental illness, racism,
sexism or poverty.
"The only way you can re-
ally justify doing work on
human remains — because
of how ethically loaded the
question of human remains
In this May 9, 2018 photo taken in Starkville, Miss., Mississippi In this May 9, 2018 photo taken in Starkville, Miss., Mississippi is — is if you generate in-
State University anthropologist Molly Zuckerman, stands amid State University anthropology major Adara Rutherford, holds a formation from them that
boxes containing the remains of 66 patients unearthed at the transverse cut of a femur, taken from one of the occupants in the is useful and beneficial to
University of Mississippi Medical Center's property in Jackson, 66 graves unearthed at what was the graveyard of the Missis- modern and future popula-
Miss. sippi State Asylum in Jackson, Miss.
tions," Zuckerman said.q