Ronn Wade wants his mummy. It's a quest that started in October, when Michigan authorities confiscated the mummified cadaver of a child illegally placed for sale on eBay.

The incident briefly made headlines around the world. And Wade, director of the anatomical-services division at University of Maryland School of Medicine, is convinced the body is part of an obscure but historic set of medical mummies known as the Burns collection.

Acquired by the university in 1820, it's one of the oldest collections of mummies once used for dissection in the United States. Since 1974, Wade has been its de facto curator.

"They're such an interesting part of the history of anatomy - definitely one of a kind," says Kristin Horner, a Michigan State University anthropologist who helped produce a recent National Geographic TV program about the Burns mummies.

Preserved in a toxic stew of arsenic and salt, the artfully dissected specimens helped educate the first generation of medical students at the University of Maryland, which celebrates its bicentennial next year.

The mummies are also revealing relics of the trade's murky early days, when the dissection of human corpses was banned and desperate medical students routinely turned to body snatching to practice their craft.

"Few sciences are as rooted in shame, infamy and bad PR as human anatomy," writes Mary Roach in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

For all these reasons, Wade wants his mummy. There's just one problem: The Detroit man who put the specimen up for sale may not want to hand it over.

"I'm not going to fight over dead people," says Wade, who oversees the state's body-donor program. "It's a question of ethics."

A few specimens from the Burns collection can be viewed in Davidge Hall in Baltimore. But to really appreciate a 200-year-old cadaver up close, a person must pass the guarded entrance of the 14-story Bressler Research Building on West Baltimore Street and descend to its cinder-block basement.

This is where all bodies donated to science in Maryland wind up, says Wade, who also serves as director of the State Anatomy Board.

One recent morning, Wade escorted a visitor beyond swinging doors marked "Laboratory Area - Authorized Personnel Only" and into a cavernous cooler chilled to 34 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Right here," Wade says, patting a triple-walled cardboard box marked "Burns."

Wade stores the 200-year-old Burns cadavers in a half-dozen cartons alongside newer arrivals respectfully hidden on draped gurneys or bagged in plastic and stacked along the walls.

Back in his office, Wade pulls out a Burns specimen he keeps to show visitors. It's the left half of a shriveled head, masterfully dissected to reveal the carotid artery. The head, which Wade stores in a No. 10 envelope box, is the color of beef jerky and smells of age.

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