Interest in his condition continued in medical circles and his body tissues and organs were dissected. The items, preserved in formaldehyde, were destroyed in the Blitz but the controversy over his remains also continues.This year, some relations called for the return of his skeleton for burial from the Royal London Hospital and have refused to take part in the documentary.Ray Merrick, whose great-grandfather was also an uncle of Joseph Merrick, said this month: “I am not interested in whether he had Proteus Syndrome or not It is enough that he had to go through life like that It must have been dreadful.”. On one score Professor Gunther von Hagens is to be congratulated. The self-promoting showman responsible for the Body Worlds show of preserved corpses has brought post-mortem tests and their role in medical science to public consciousness in a way that earnest entreaties from royal colleges have failed to do.

While his motives may be questioned for playing to the public’s fascination with death, there can be no doubting that education is exactly what the public, and the medical profession, need.For the post-mortem examination is in a critical state. It is going out of fashion and doctors fear that the decline has reached the point where their rarity now threatens the living. The hour spent by the pathologist with the corpse on the slab in the mortuary can disclose details about the death that could prevent future ones.The Royal College of Pathologists warned after the Alder Hey organ retention scandal last year that the number of post-mortem tests had fallen to “dangerously low levels”. Yet in 15 per cent of cases the examination shows that the diagnosis was wrong to the extent that different treatment should have been given. That suggests that, in one in six cases, patients who had been given a different drug or a different operation might have survived longer. But without such work the secret of their undisclosed illness dies with them.Thirty years ago, most people who died in hospital had a post-mortem test Today only a tiny fraction do.

Of 556,000 deaths reported in England and Wales in 1999, just 3,330 (0.6 per cent) were followed by a post-mortem examination instigated by a doctor.Professor Sir John Lilleyman, president of the Royal College of Pathologists, said yesterday: “We are not doing enough hospital post-mortems and that will eventually impact on patient care. The problem is that post-mortems don’t help meet government targets and no one wants to pay for them. There are no post-mortems in the private sector and the NHS does not give them high priority.”The decline has been driven in part by growing public distaste. Although there is a public appetite for grisly displays of body parts in horror movies and medieval torture museums, permitting the dissection of a relative or friend, even for the benefit of medical science, is an idea that offends many.Professor Lilleyman said: “People don’t like the idea of being messed about. A common response to the request for a post-mortem is, ‘He or she has suffered enough’.” Improved methods of diagnosis using hi-tech imaging equipment, such as MRI scans, and growing confidence among doctors that they know the cause of death have also fuelled the decline. “Most people dying in hospital have a diagnosis and maybe clinicians feel they don’t need to go through the autopsy.