Lit Circle Work Week 5, "Dead Men Do Tell Tales"

Maples does not know where evil comes from but he has encountered it both in victims and in executed evildoers. He has seen the bodies of the wicked on full display; their brains fascinate him. The instruments of murder are vast; Maples has seen hammers, wrenches, tree limbs,building blocks and artificial legs used to kill. Murderers rarely use heavy objects. To see the depths of human depravity, one need only look to the Medico-legal Investigation of Death, a 623-page tome that sears the eyes of the unfamiliar. The worst is Chapter Eighteen which deals with wrongful childhood deaths.The cases of young children that Maples faces remain the most vivid in his memory, such as the remains of a five-year-old girl found in a cloth bag thrown into a pond. She is murdered, very likely by her mother and her mother's boyfriend.

Lit Circle Work Week 4, "Dead Men Do Tell Tales"

Lit Circle Work Week 3, "Dead Men Do Tell Tales"

Lit Circle Work Week 2, "Dead Men Do Tell Tales"

Maples's laboratory is full of dry bones but the bones can still tell stories to him and his students. Bones are often burned, boiled, desiccated, are bones of martyrs, murderers, and so on. Skeletons of all kinds are housed there. The lab is built according to Maples' design in 1991. The securityis as tight as it can be, given the legal importance of the skeletons. It has a safety shower, three "odor hoods" and many ventilated enclosures. Sometimes the odors are terrible.

Full skeletonization can be very rapid, as quickly as nine days depending on the environment. Maples's friend, Bill Bass, helps uncover a decay rate facility to study just this problem. In Maples's morgue, they process thirty to forty bodies a year, all of which are documented in detail. You must get used to the smell of reeking corpses but Maples has seen many policemen, lawyers and others.

Skeletal Disease Blog

Dear Mom,

I've been wanting to tell you this some quite some time now but I didn't want you to worry. So I thought I'd write you a letter instead. This is what happened, I went to my Doctor last week to because i was having very uncomfortable pains in my bones. So he ran some tests, and one of them showed a high calcium count. Most people would think this is good, but the calcium, was in my blood, not my bones. I was then sent for a Bone Density, which showed I had Severe Osteoporosis. My doctor insisted I let you and the family know to see if I have a family history of it, but i didn't think it would've made a difference anyways.That one diagnosis has changed my life, as it is a disease that takes over your Endocrine System.

Osteosarcoma Brochure (Cancer Blog)

So after reading Vanessa's brochure on Osteosarcoma, I found out it is a cancerous or malignant bone tumor that usually develops during the period of rapid growth in adolescence. What shocked me was that it is more commonly found in males than in females, and approximately 300 people die each year. There are many forms of this cancer as well. The causes of this cancer arise from unpredictable errors in the DNA of growing bone cells during the time of intense bone growth. The equipment used to diagnose this cancer is biopsies, x-rays, blood tests, bone scans, CT scans, MRI's, and PET scans. The treatments used to handle and remove it are Radiation Therapy and Chemotherapy. Although at this time, there are no known preventions for osteosarcoma but it is always suggested to live a healthy lifestyle.

Lit Circle Work Week 1, "Dead Men Do Tell Tales"

Sketch Master

     

 Author Williams Maples has seen death countless times in many manifestations but always sees it through a scientific lens. He teaches physical anthropology to graduate students at the University of Florida, though he is often asked to investigate wrongful death cases. With a scientist's perspective, then, Maples believes that the truths about such deaths wish to be discovered and can be through the science of forensic anthropology. The human skeleton, unnamed and unfleshed, fills Maples with wonder and provides him a mystery to unravel with the tools of science alone. He also wants to see life as it really is, no matter how bad. When Maples sees his first autopsy photos of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow he is enthralled. However, Maples recognizes what he does also serves a public, not just personal purpose.