Morgue is an abbreviation or an integral word?

Of course, the word "morgue" is far from the most pleasant in terms of its meaning. However, it has an interesting history of appearance, very often emerges in the works of mass culture. Those who still decided to learn more about this word (or abbreviation?), We will try to expand it "on the shelves."

The abbreviation "Morgue"

The term "morgue" refers to a special building or a facility at forensic medical institutions, where identification, storage, autopsy and subsequent delivery of corpses for burial take place.

The word "morgue" is unofficial, used only in conversational speech of specialists. On slang pathologists "morgue" - this is an abbreviation, meaning "the place of final registration of citizens." In official medical documents there is no such interpretation. Moreover, they do not meet the word itself. In hospitals, the procedure for opening the bodies of the deceased occurs in thanatological (pathoanatomical) halls, in institutions of forensic medical examination of corpses.

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

History of the concept

Morgue is an abbreviation or a word of French origin. In the Langdeck dialect of this language, morga (morgue) means nothing other than "face", "the place of the exhibition of persons". But what does this attitude have to the pathoanatomical halls?

This was the name of the premises in French prisons, where new convicts were brought. It was arranged in such a way that nothing prevented the guard from peering into the faces of the convicts until the image of the convicts was imprinted in memory as a photograph. Then the mortuary was made more versatile. In the department, the corpses of unknown persons were folded, so that passers-by could see them and, if necessary, identify them.

For the first time such a morgue appeared in 1604 in Gran Chatel, it even had its name: Basse-Geôle. The corpses were washed and put in a cellar to somehow prevent the decomposition. Above the underground morgue was a wide window - for the identification procedure. All this difficult business was organized by the hospital sisters of the Order of St. Catherine.

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

Morgue in Russia

Since in the XV-XVII centuries. On the territory of the Moscow State, the climate of the small ice age reigned, in the winter it was extremely difficult to bury the deceased - a deep layer of snow, solidified, hard as a stone, the earth. The deceased were washed, wrapped in a white linen, shod in red shoes and taken to Bozhed. God's house is a building built outside the settlement, a morgue (the abbreviation of the present time does not reflect its essence either) to some extent. Here, the hardened and from that hard corpses simply stacked on each other. In the spring, when the land began to thaw, relatives took from Bozhedom the body of the deceased and betrayed him to the ground.

Working in the morgue

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

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