China denied such practices. Historically, anatomy murders took place during the earlier parts of modern Western medicine. In the 19th century, the human body was still poorly understood, but fresh cadavers for dissection and anatomical study were sometimes difficult to obtain. Mortuaries remained the most common source, but in some cases, such as the notorious Irish murderers Burke and Hare, victims were killed instead and the killers then sold the bodies for study. The practice has intermittently been reported since that time; in 1992 Colombian activist Juan Pablo Ordoñez, claimed that 14 poor residents of the town of Barranquilla had been killed for local medical study with a purported account by an alleged escapee being publicized by the international press. The objective of medicine murder is to create traditional medicine based partly on human flesh. Medicine murder is often termed ritual murder or muthi / muti murder, although there is evidence to suggest that the degree of ritual involved in the making of medicine is only a small element of the practice overall. Social anthropological ethnographies have documented anecdotes of medicine murder in southern Africa since the 1800s, and research has shown that incidences of medicine murder increase in times of political and economic stress. The practice is commonly associated with witchcraft, although ethnographic evidence suggests that this has not always been the case, and that it may have been accorded local-level political sanction. Medicine murder is difficult to describe concisely, as it has changed over time, involving an ever-greater variety of perpetrator, victim, method and motive. Most detailed information about the minutiae of medicine murder is derived from state witnesses in trials, court records and third-party anecdote. The phenomenon is widely acknowledged to occur in southern Africa, although no country has issued an accurate and up to date record of the frequency with which it takes place. This is not only because of the secrecy of the practice, given its controversial status, but also because of difficulties in classifying subcategories of murder. Medicine murder has been a topic of urban legends in South Africa, but this does not diminish its status as a practice that has resulted in legal trials and convictions of perpetrators. The perpetrators are usually men, although women have been convicted as well, most notably in Swaziland when Phillippa Mdluli was hanged in 1983 for commissioning a medicine murder. Perpetrators vary widely in age and social status. An individual or group of individuals commissions an "inyanga" (a herbalist skilled in traditional medicine) to assist them by concocting a medicine called "muti".