Although Delaney certainly isn't against philanthropy or helping the field of medical science along, it wasn't basically philanthropy that led him to donate his body to medical science.
It was money.
Delaney reports that under the agreement his widow won't have any funeral or burial expenses in connection with his death. The medical school, he said, will pay all the costs of transportation and costs incident to the preparation of his body for the medical stint.
That can come to a sizable sum, Delaney avers. He pointed out that a body in a coffin costs double the fare in transportation rates.
Two factors primarily triggered Delaney to will his body to medicine. The best-selling "The High Cost of Dying" started him thinking, and a short stint as a cemetery lot salesman after his retirement transferred his thoughts into action.
...
"I listened to salesman sell people cemetery lots in the shade, and I wondered what difference it could make after you're dead," Delaney observes.
But Delaney admits he had been thinking of ways of beating the undertaker long before he took the medial school route. Seven years ago when he and his wife took a cruise from New Orleans to Europe aboard a freighter with no doctor aboard, he told her if he died enroute, he wanted "to be sewn in a canvas and thrown overboard."
"I told her I didn't want to be carted around the world dead in a freighter," Delaney reports.
A Catholic, Delaney reports he checked out his after-death plans with his parish priest and that it has his okay.
"When people get married, they should prepare for dying," Delaney said.
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Delaney didn't make any points with his personal physician when he suggested after his (Delaney's) death that the doctor go by and see what mistakes he had been making, if any, in his treatment.
"I just thought it might teach him something," Delaney chortles.
Pretty funny stuff. There's also a type-writer produced letter he wrote to my Grandma and her sister. The best part:
I have been writing to congressman, senators, and influential people all over the country asking them to pressure Congress to put a limit ON THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ASSETS THAT ANY ONE PERSON MAY HAVE AT ANY ONE TIME IN HIS LIFE WHETHER THAT LIMIT IS ONE MILLION OR FIFTY MILLION JUST SO SOME LIMIT IS SET. It may be raised or lowered as seen fit. As to birth control I am for quality control. Anyone contemplating marriage should submit his health record and if his or his family record shows any incurable diseases, insanity, or pronounced physical defects he must submit to an operation so he or she could not bring children in the world so I am with the Pope on birth control. I might add the latter suggestion of mine was published in the paper here and some guy called me Hitler and Kay told me if he hadn't she would have so you know how she stands."
