Of course, the word "morgue" is far from the most pleasant in terms of its meaning. However, it has an interesting history of occurrence, very often pops up in the works of mass culture. Those who nevertheless decided to learn more about this word (or the abbreviation?), We will try to put it “on the shelves”.
The abbreviation "Morgue"
The term "morgue" refers to a special building or premises at forensic institutions where identification, storage, opening and subsequent issuance of corpses for burial takes place.
The word "morgue" is unofficial, used only in colloquial speech of specialists. In the slang of pathologists, “morgue” 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. At hospitals, the procedure for opening the bodies of the deceased takes place in tanatological (pathoanatomical) halls, in institutions of forensic medical examination of corpses.
From here, morgues come in two varieties. Those where a study is carried out of those who died from diseases are called pathological anatomical. And those where an examination of the victims by violent death is carried out (or there is at least some suspicion about this, for example, complaints of the deceased's relatives about improper treatment), unidentified bodies, are called forensic.
Concept history
Morgue is an abbreviation or word of French origin. In the Languedoc dialect of this language, morga (morgue) means nothing more than "face", "place of exhibition of faces." But what does this have to do with the pathological halls?
This was the name of the premises in French prisons, where newly-made prisoners were brought. It was equipped 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 morgue was made more universal. In the department, corpses of unknown people were piled up, so that passers-by could see them and, in which case, identify them.
The first such morgue appeared in 1604 in Gran Châtel, it even had its name: Basse-Geôle. The corpses were washed and put into the cellar to somehow prevent decomposition. There was a wide window above the underground morgue - for the identification procedure. All this difficult matter was organized by the hospital sisters of the Order of St. Catherine.
Such a morgue (the abbreviation of modernity did not fit him then) lasted until 1804. Then they decided to make his device more humane.
Morgue in Russia
Since in the XV-XVII centuries. the climate of the small ice age reigned on the territory of the Moscow state, in winter it was extremely difficult to bury the deceased - a deep layer of snow, frozen, solid, stone-like earth. The dead were washed, wrapped in a white cloth, they were shod in red shoes and taken away to the Divine. The house of God is a building built outside the village, a morgue (the abbreviation of the present tense also does not reflect its essence) to some extent. Here the dead and solid bodies were simply stacked on top of each other. In the spring, when the earth began to thaw, relatives took the body of the deceased from God’s house and betrayed it to the earth.
Work in the morgue
In modern pathological halls, the bodies of the deceased are stored in special chambers at a temperature of +2 degrees Celsius. It is such a temperature regime that prevents the rapid development of the rotting process. Personal belongings and clothing of the deceased or deceased are in lockers in the state in which they entered the thanatology department. After an autopsy is performed and the cause of death is established, the deceased’s things are disposed of, and the body is handed over to relatives for cremation or burial.
Thus, “morgue” is an abbreviation and a whole word at the same time, but used only in specific colloquial speech.