In Germany, in the late 1700s, there were physicians who believed that the only way to tell if someone was truly dead was to wait for the person to start rotting—bloating, smelling, the whole works. This belief led to the creation of the Leichenhaus, a “waiting mortuary,” where dead bodies would hang out in a fire-heated room (heat encourages decomposition) until no one could dispute that the dead person was 100 percent dead.
