The Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection
Robert J. Terry (1871-1966) was professor of anatomy and the principal of the Anatomy Department at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri. He concentrated all his efforts at studying normal and pathological variants in the skeleton and investigating skeletal biology, anatomy and pathology.
In the 1920’s, Dr. Terry started collecting human skeletons from corpses used in the Medical School's Anatomy classes. The bodies were provided by local St. Louis hospital and institutional morgues, as well as some other institutions in the state of Missouri. The bodies not claimed or signed over by relatives became the state property. The Medical School needed bodies for cadaver research. In 1955 the Willed Body Law of Missouri was issued. It stated that the body could be used for scientific purposes only given a signed release document from the person or his closest family members. If the first part of the collection consisted mainly of people of lower incomes, the latter components were coming from families of middle or upper middle incomes.
Dr. Terry decided to draw up a uniform protocol for the collecting, cataloging, maceration and storage of the collection. The right way of maceration provided long-term preservation of this deeply studied collection.
Documentation records give such information as the name, the sex, age and ethnic group, cause and date of death, and various dates and records related to embalming or body preservation procedure. The skeletal catalogue indicated damaged or absent bones. More than a half of the collection features anthropometric measurements of the cadaver, photographs or photo negatives, as well as more than 800 plaster death masks made of the corpses before maceration. Hair and skin samples were also obtained from a part of the collection. Over 1050 hair samples are left with the collection, but the skin samples were not saved because of destruction of the Cold Room during the 1960s renovation works.
Dr. Terry retired in 1941, and another well known skeletal biologist, Dr. Mildred Trotter (1899-1991), worked hard to keep on collecting skeletons until her retirement in 1967. Dr. Trotter took great care of balancing the demography of the collection. She focused her attention on gathering younger individuals, especially white females, not enough presented in the collection. In Dr. Trotter's collection, the major part of these individuals was willed, and some of them had even written personal and medical histories, but just a few of them survived in the records. It is almost impossible to count the total number of skeletons received over the years, at the termination of the project, approximately 2000 documented skeletons still existed.
Since the 1950s the Anatomy Department has altered the focus of its research to brain morphology and function. In 1967 this transaction was made between the Anatomy Department at Washington University Medical School and the National Museum of Natural History's Anthropology Department. Thus the collection was transferred to the National Museum of Natural History's Anthropology Department in Washington, D.C. It also received Dr. Trotter's collection of burnt bone from her research on bone ash weight as well as her collection of hair samples from her studies on hair morphology and identification.
Nowadays, the Terry collection comprises 1728 specimens of known age, sex, ethnic origin, cause of death and pathological conditions. Age at death range is from 16 years to 102 years, and date of birth from 1822 to 1943. The highest percentage of individuals is 45 or older.
Dr. Terry gave some part of his skeletal collections to other institutions. He transferred 6 complete individuals to W. W. Howells, now representing part of the collections at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. A sample set of 13 skulls was sent to Ales Hrdlicka and added to the NMNH collections in 1927.
A small range of survived osteological materials taken from Drs. Terry and Trotter's collecting are placed in the Osteology Laboratory of the Anthropology Department at Washington University. These are specimens not included in the collection because of their incomplete nature or not perfect preservation.
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