Morg - an abbreviation or a whole word?

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Of course, the word "mortuary" is far from the most pleasant in terms of its meaning. However, it has an interesting history of appearance, very often pops up in the works of popular culture. For those who nevertheless decided to learn more about this word (or an abbreviation?), We will try to sort it out "on the shelves".

Abbreviation "Morg"

The concept of "mortuary" refers to a special building or room at forensic institutions, where identification, storage, autopsy and subsequent issuance of corpses for burial.

The word "mortuary" is informal, used only in colloquial speech of specialists. In the slang of pathologists, "mortuary" is an abbreviation meaning "place of final registration of citizens." There is no such interpretation in official medical documents. Moreover, the word itself is not found in them. In hospitals, the procedure for autopsy of the bodies of the deceased takes place in thanatological (pathoanatomical) rooms, in institutions for forensic medical examination of corpses.

From here morgues come in two varieties. Those where the study of those who died from diseases is carried out are called pathoanatomical. And those where an examination of those who died a violent death is carried out (or there is at least some suspicion about this, for example, complaints from relatives of the deceased about improper treatment), unidentified bodies, are called forensic.

History of the concept

Morgue is an abbreviation or word of French origin. In the Languedoc dialect of this language, morga (morgue) means nothing more than "face", "place for the exhibition of faces." But what does this have to do with pathology rooms?

This was the name of the room in the French prisons, where the newly minted prisoners were brought. It was equipped in such a way that nothing prevented the guards from peering into the faces of the convicts as long as the image of the convicts was imprinted in the memory like a photograph. Then the morgue was made more versatile. In the department, the corpses of unknown people were simply piled up so that passers-by could see them and, in which case, identify them.

For the first time such a mortuary appeared in 1604 in Grand Chatel, it even had its own name: Basse-Geôle. The corpses were washed and placed in the cellar in order to somehow prevent decomposition. There was a wide window above the underground mortuary - for the identification procedure. All this difficult work was organized by the hospital sisters of the Order of St. Catherine.

Such a mortuary (the abbreviation of modernity did not fit it then) existed until 1804. Then they decided to make his device more humane.

Morgue in Russia

Because in the XV-XVII centuries. the climate of the Little Ice Age reigned on the territory of the Moscow State, in winter it was extremely difficult to bury the dead - a deep layer of snow, frozen earth, hard as a stone. The dead were washed, wrapped in white linen, put on red shoes and taken to Bozhed. God's house is a room built outside the settlement, a mortuary (the abbreviation of the present tense also does not reflect its essence) to some extent. Here, the cold and therefore hard corpses were simply piled on top of each other. In the spring, when the earth began to thaw, the relatives took the body of the deceased from Bozhedom and buried it in the ground.

Working in the morgue

In modern pathology rooms, the bodies of the deceased are stored in special chambers at a temperature of +2 degrees Celsius. It is this temperature regime that prevents the rapid development of the decay process. Personal belongings and clothes of the deceased or deceased are in the storage rooms in the same condition in which they entered the thanatology department. After an autopsy is performed and the cause of death is established, the belongings of the deceased are disposed of, and the body is given to relatives for cremation or burial.

Thus, "mortuary" is an abbreviation and a whole word at the same time, but used only in a specific colloquial speech.