Join Dr. Price Blair, professor of anatomy at the University of Lynchburg, to uncover the dark and often macabre history of body snatching in the United States. This lecture will explore how the urgent demand for cadavers for medical education fueled an illegal market in the 18th and 19th centuries, leading to grave robbing and, even, murder. How widespread was this criminal practice? What cemeteries and groups were victimized? What were the societal and legal responses to body snatching? Did this practice occur in Virginia, and even in Lynchburg? How did body snatching shape the development of modern medicine?

Price Blair is an Associate Professor in the University of Lynchburg’s Doctor of Physical Therapy Program and the Assistant Director of the Westover Honors Program at the University. Dr. Blair joined the faculty of the University of Lynchburg in 2010.  Prior to that, he earned his BA in both Chemistry and Classics from Washington and Lee University.  In 2008, he received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics from Boston University School of Medicine, where he studied protein receptors that mediate platelet-bacteria interactions.

After receiving his doctorate, he continued his work as a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School. While still a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Blair began teaching night courses as an adjunct faculty member at Fisher College in Boston, and he fell hopelessly in love with teaching. Today, Dr. Blair teaches courses in human gross anatomy, human physiology, neuroanatomy, pathology, and pharmacology. Dr. Blair also teaches a Westover Honors colloquium on ‘Frankenstein and the Science of Synthetic Life’, and he has led multiple study abroad trips to Italy, England, Scotland, and Germany to study the history of anatomy and medicine. In 2016, Dr. Blair was awarded the inaugural Edward A. Polloway Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Dr. Blair and his wife, Beverly, both grew up in Lynchburg and they have two children – Brantley (15) and Virginia (12). In his spare time, Dr. Blair enjoys reading, coaching baseball for EC Glass, and sewing bow ties.