Martin van Butchell
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'''Martin van Butchell''' (1735-1814)<ref name="years">{{
cite journal
|year=1999
|month=November
|title=Martin Van Butchell (1735-1814): the eccentric, "kook" dentist of old London.
|journal=History of Dentistry
|volume=3
|issue=47
|pages=99-104
|pmid=10726564
}}</ref> was an eccentric [[United Kingdom|British]] [[dentist]] who put his dead wife on display, reputedly because of a clause in a marriage contract.
Butchell became a dentist in the 1760's [[London]]. He advertised in ''[[St. James's Chronicle ]]''with a text: "Real or Artificial Teeth from one to an entire set, with superlative gold pivots or springs, also gums, sockets and palate formed, fitted, finished and fixed without drawing stumps, or causing pain."
When his wife Mary died on January 14 [[1775]], he decided to have her embalmed and turn her into an attraction to draw more customers. He contacted his teacher of surgery and anatomy Dr. [[William Hunter]] and Dr. [[William Cruikshank]] who agreed to do the job.
Doctors injected the body with preservatives and color additives that gave a glow to the corpse's cheeks, replaced her eyes with [[glass eye]]s and dressed her in a fine lace gown. The body was then embedded in a layer of [[plaster of Paris]] in a glass-topped coffin.
Butchell put the body on display in the window of his home, which also housed his practice, and always referred to her as "my dearly departed". Many Londoners came to see the body but Butchell also drew criticism on his gruesome display. A rumor, possibly started by Butchell himself, claimed that a clause in their [[marriage certificate]] had provided income for Butchell as long as Mary was "above ground".
Eventually Butchell remarried and the new wife, Elizabeth, demanded that he remove the body of her predecessor from his window. Butchell gave the body to a brother of doctor Hunter for his museum. The body ended up in the [[Royal College of Surgeons of England|Royal College of Surgeons]].
The [[embalming]] was not very effective; the body begun to slowly deteriorate. In [[1941]], the body of Mary Butchell was finally destroyed in a German bombing raid.
==References==
<references />
* [http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673604155682/abstract The Lancet (requires subscription)]
* [http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101004173/ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]
* [http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1552353]
* [http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/citation/CXCVI/mar03/105-e Oxford Journals]
* [http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:2695150 Bioinfo]
* [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2068403 PubMed Central]
* Martin Van Butchell (1736–1814). The Lancet, Volume 363, Issue 9408, Page 578 B. Bynum
{{Lifetime|1735|1812|Butchell, Martin van}}
[[Category:British dentists]]
[[Category:Death-related art]]