List of individual body parts

There have been historical instances of specific, individual organs and appendages being famous in their own regard. Many noted body parts are of dubious provenance^[1] and most were separated from their bodies post-mortem.^[2]

In some faiths, veneration of the dead may include the preservation of body parts as relics. Body parts supposed to belong to major religious figures are kept in temples, including the tooth of the Buddha, Muhammad's beard, and Jesus's foreskin. Preservation of body parts is particularly popular within the Roman Catholic Church, where the relics are often housed in reliquaries and lipsanothecae.^[3]

In the West, a cult of relics emerged in the Middle Ages^[4] and most body parts preserved prior to the Age of Enlightenment belonged to saints. Heart-burial (burying the heart separately from the body) was not uncommon for the elite in medieval Europe. In the 19th century, the pseudoscience of phrenology led to an increased interest in heads and skulls. As preservation methods and the anatomical sciences developed, parts of scientists were increasingly preserved, especially brains.^[2]

Body parts removed from people have been used for research or put on display in museums and churches. Noted body parts include the lost limbs of soldiers, such as Lord Uxbridge's leg or Stonewall Jackson's arm, as well as the heads and brains of criminals.^[5][6]