world by the public dissection of two human bodies. In the 15th century,
Leonardo da Vinci contributed essentially to the progress of the art, by
the introduction of anatomical plates, which were admirably executed. In
the 16th century, the Emperor, Charles the 5th, ordered a consultation
to be held by the divines of Salamanca, to determine whether it was
lawful, in point of conscience, to dissect a dead body in order to learn
its structure. In the 17th century, Cortesius, professor of anatomy at
Bologna, and afterwards professor of medicine at Messina, had long begun
a treatise on practical anatomy, which he had an earnest desire to
finish, but so great was the difficulty of prosecuting the study even in
Italy, that in 24 years he could only twice procure an opportunity of
dissecting a human body, and even then with difficulty and in hurry;
whereas, he had expected to have done so, he says, once every year,
according to the custom of the famous academies of Italy. In Muscovy,
until very lately, both anatomy and the use of skeletons were positively
forbidden; the first as inhuman, and the latter as subservient to
witchcraft. Even the illustrious Luther was so biassed by the prejudices
of his age, that he ascribed the majority of the diseases to the arts of
the devil, and found great fault with physicians when they attempted to
account for them by natural causes. England acquired the bad fame of
being the country of witches, and opposed almost insuperable obstacles
to the cultivation of anatomy. Even at present the prejudices of the
people on this subject are violent and deeply rooted. The measure of
that violence may be estimated by the degree of abhorrence with which
they regard those persons who are employed to procure the subjects
necessary for dissection. In this country, there is no other method of
obtaining subjects but that of exhumation: aversion to this employment
may be pardoned: dislike to the persons who engage in it is natural, but
to regard them with detestation, to exult in their punishment, to
determine for themselves its nature and measure, and to endeavor to
assume the power of inflicting it with their own hands, is absurd.
Magistrates have too often fostered the prejudices of the people, and
afforded them the means of executing their vengeance on the objects of
their aversion. The press has uniformly allied itself with the ignorance
and violence of the vulgar, and has done every thing in its power to
inflame the passions, which it was its duty to endeavor to soothe. It is
notorious that the winter before last there was scarcely a week in which
the papers did not contain the most exaggerated and disgusting
statements: the appetite which could be gratified with such
representations, was sufficiently degraded: but still more base was the
servility which could pander to it. Half a century ago there was in
Scotland no difficulty in obtaining the subjects which were necessary to
supply the schools of anatomy. The consequence was, that medicine and
surgery assumed new life--started from the torpor in which they had been
spell-bound--and made an immediate, and rapid, and brilliant progress.
The new seminaries constantly sent into the world men of the most
splendid abilities, at once demonstrating the excellence of the schools
in which they were educated, and rendering them illustrious. Pupils
flocked to them from all quarters of the globe, and they essentially
contributed to that advancement of science which the present age has
witnessed. In the 19th century, the good people of Scotland, that
intelligent, that cool and calculating, that most reasonable and
thinking people, have thought proper to return to the worst feeling and
the worst conduct of the darkest periods of antiquity. There is at
present no offence whatever, which seems to have such power to heat and
exalt into a kind of torrent, the blood which usually flows so calmly
and sluggishly in the veins of a Scotchman. The people of 1823 (to
compare great things with small) emulate the spirit of those of their
forefathers who "_were out in the forty-five_;" the object, to be sure,
is somewhat different, but it is amusing to see the intensity and
seriousness of the excitement. About twelve months ago an honest farmer
of the name of Scott, who resides at Linlithgow, apprehended a poor
wight who was pursuing his vocation, we presume, in the churchyard of
that place; and this service appeared so meritorious to the people in
his neighborhood, that they absolutely presented him with a piece of
plate. In the winter sessions of 1822-3, a body was discovered on its
way to the lecture-room of an anatomist in Glasgow, and in spite of the
exertions of the police, aided by those of the military, this
gentleman's premises and their contents, which were valuable, were
entirely destroyed by the mob. For some time after this achievement, it
was necessary to station a military guard at the houses of all the
medical professors in that city. In the spring circuit of the justiciary
court last year at Stirling, while the judges were proceeding to the
court, the procession was assaulted with missiles; several persons were
injured, and it was necessary to call in the protection of a military
force. The object of the mob was to inflict summary punishment on a man
who was about to be tried for the exhumation of a body. We happen to
know that the most disgraceful proceedings were some time ago instituted
in that town against a young gentleman of respectable family and
connections, who was in fact expatriated, and whose prospects in life
were entirely changed, if not ruined, because he had too much honor to
implicate his instructors in a transaction which would have put them to
an inconvenience, and in which they had engaged from a desire faithfully
to discharge their duty to their pupils. Within the last five years
three men were lodged in the county jail at Haddington, charged with a
trespass in the churchyard of that town. So enraged was the mob against
them, that an attempt was made to force the jail in order to get at
them. On their way to the court, the men were again attacked, forced
from the carriage, and severely maimed. After examination they were
admitted to bail; but, when set at liberty, they were assailed with more
violence than ever, and were nearly killed. On the 29th of June, 1823,
being Sunday, a most extraordinary outrage was perpetrated in the
streets of Edinburgh. A coach containing an empty coffin and two men,
was observed proceeding along the south bridge. The people suspecting
that it was intended to convey a body taken from some churchyard, seized
the coach. It was with difficulty that the police protected the men from
the assaults of the populace: the coach they had no power to preserve.
The horses were taken from it, and together with the coffin, after
having been trundled a mile and a half through the streets of the city,
it was deliberately projected over the steep side of the mound, and
smashed into a thousand pieces. The people following it to the bottom,
kindled a fire with its fragments, and surrounded it like the savages in
Robinson Crusoe, till it was entirely consumed. In this case there was
no foundation for their suspicions. The coffin was intended to have
conveyed to his house in Edinburgh the body of a physician who that
morning had died in a cottage near the neighborhood. A similar assault
was some time ago made on two American gentlemen, who went to visit the
abbey of Linlithgow after nightfall. The churchyards of the "gude Scots"
are now strictly guarded by men and dogs; watch-towers are erected
within the grounds, and _mort-safes_, as they are called, that is to
say, strong iron frames are deposited in the ground over the graves.
These people sometimes declare that they will put an end to anatomy, and
certainly they are succeeding in the accomplishment of this menace as
rapidly as they can well desire. The average number of medical students
in Edinburgh is 700 each session. For several years past the difficulty
of procuring subjects in that place has been so great, that out of all
that number, not more than 150 or 200 have ever attempted to dissect;
and even these have latterly been so opposed in their endeavours to
prosecute their studies, that many of them have left the place in
disgust. We have been informed by a friend, that he alone was personally
acquainted with twenty individuals who retired from it at the beginning
of last session, and who went to pursue their studies at Dublin, and we
know that vast numbers followed their example at the end of the winter
course. The medical school at Edinburgh, in fact, is now subsisting
entirely on its past reputation; in the course of a few years it will be
entirely at an end, unless the system be changed. Let those who have the
prosperity of the university at heart, and who have the power to
protect it, consider this before it be too late: they may be assured it
is no idle prediction; for we give them notice, that it is at this
moment the universal opinion and the current language of every
well-informed medical man in England.
An excellent system of anatomical plates, which has been well received
by the profession, has lately been published by Mr. Lizars, a lecturer
on anatomy and physiology, in Edinburgh. This gentleman states that he
has been induced to undertake this work, in order to obviate the most
fatal consequences to the public; as far, at least, as a reference to
art, instead of nature, is capable of obviating those consequences. He
affirms, that the difficulty of obtaining instruction from nature has
risen to such a pitch, owing to the extraordinary severity exercised by
the legal authorities of the kingdom against persons employed in
procuring subjects for dissection, as to threaten the ultimate
destruction of medical and anatomical science. In his preface to the
second part of his work, he apologizes to his readers for dividing one
portion of it from another, with which it ought to have been connected;
but states that he has been compelled to do so from the prejudices of
the place, which prevented him for upwards of five months, from
procuring a subject from which he might make his drawings. "In place of
living," he says, "in a civilized and enlightened period, we appear as
if we had been thrown back some centuries into the dark ages of
ignorance, bigotry and superstition. Prejudices, worthy only of the
multitude, have been conjured up and appealed to, in order to call forth
popular indignation against those whose business it is to exhibit
demonstratively the structure of the human body, and the functions of
its different organs. The public journals, from a vicious propensity to
pander to the vulgar appetite for excitement, have raked up and
industriously circulated stories of exhumation of dead bodies, tending
to exasperate and inflame the passions of the mob; and persons who, by
their own showing, are friendly to the interests of science, have, in
the excess of their zeal that bodies should remain undisturbed in their
progress to decomposition, laboured to destroy in this country, that
art, whose province it is to free living bodies from the consequences
inseparable from accident and disease. And, which is worst of all, the
prejudices of the multitude have been confirmed and rendered inveterate
by the proceedings in our courts of justice, which have visited with the
punishment due only to felons, the unhappy persons necessarily employed
in the present state of the law, in procuring subjects for the
dissecting-room."
He then goes on to state, that until anatomy be publicly sanctioned in
Edinburgh, the school of medicine there can never flourish; that upon
the present system, young men obtain a degree or a diploma after a year
or two of grinding, that is, of learning by rote the answers to the
questions which the examiners are in the habit of putting to the
candidates; that ignorant of the very elements of their profession,
numbers of persons thus educated annually, go to the East and West
Indies, and to the army and navy, where they have the charge of hundreds
of their suffering fellow creatures, to whom they are in fact the
instruments of cruelty and murder. In the preface to the 4th Part, he
adds, that when Part II. was published, in the early part of the
session, he took occasion to express his sorrow for the degraded state
of his profession, and the threatened ruin of the Medical School of his
native place, owing to the scarcity of subjects: That, for doing this,
he has incurred considerable censure: that he regrets that he has yet
found no reason to alter his opinion, for the winter session is now near
its conclusion, and, he candidly declares, that such has been the
scarcity of material, that _no teacher of anatomy or surgery has been
able either to follow the regular plan of his course, or to do his duty
to his pupils_; the consequence of which has been, that many of the
students have left the school in disgust, and gone either to Dublin or
Paris; while a still greater number, deprived of the means of
dissecting, have contented themselves with lectures or theories, and
with grinding; and entered on the practice of their profession ignorant
of its fundamental principles.
Much of this opposition on the part of the people, arises from the
present mode of procuring subjects. Fortunately, there is in Great
Britain no custom, no superstition, no law, and we may add, no
prejudice, against anatomy itself. There is even a general conviction of
its necessity; there may be a feeling that it is a repulsive employment,
but it is commonly acknowledged that it must not be neglected. The
opposition which is made, is made not against anatomy, but against the
practice of exhumation: and this is a practice which ought to be
opposed. It is in the highest degree revolting; it would be disgraceful
to a horde of savages; every feeling of the human heart rises up against
it: so long as no other means of procuring bodies for dissection are
provided, it must be tolerated; but, in itself, it is alike odious to
the ignorant and the enlightened, to the most uncultivated and the most
refined.
But the capital objection to this practice is, that it necessarily
creates a crime, and educates a race of criminals.--Exhumation is
forbidden by the law. It is, indeed, prohibited by no statute, either in
England or Scotland: in both, it is an offence punishable at common law.
There is a statute of James the first, which makes it felony to steal a
dead body for the purpose of witchcraft; there is none against taking a
body for the purpose of dissection. In the case of the King against Lynn
(1788), the court decided that the body being taken for the latter
purpose, did not make it less an indictable offence; and that it is
without doubt cognizable in a criminal court, because it is an act
"highly indecent, at the bare idea of which nature revolts." It is
punishable, therefore, by fine or imprisonment, or both: In Scotland, it
is also punishable by whipping, and even by transportation.
We expected better things of America. We cannot express our astonishment
and indignation, when we found that the state of New York has actually
made it felony to remove a dead body from the place of sepulture for the
purpose of dissection, without providing in any other mode for the
schools of anatomy. This is worse than any thing that exists in any
other part of the world. If these pages should meet the eye of any of
our American brethren, we intreat them to read with attention, the facts
which have been stated in the former part of this article, and to
consider with seriousness the mischief they are doing. It will not be
believed in England, that such scenes could have been witnessed in
America, as were actually exhibited there scarcely a month ago. To
satisfy our readers, however, that we do not misrepresent the state of
things in that country, we transcribe the following accounts from _The
New York Evening Post_, of _May 20th_. "At the late Court of Sessions,
Solomon Parmeli was indicted for a misdemeanor, in entering Potter's
Field, and removing the covers of two coffins deposited in a pit, and
covered partly with earth. _The statute of this state making it a
felony, to dig up or remove a dead human body with intent to dissect
it_, did not embrace this case; because the prisoner had not dug up or
removed the body. Mr. Schureman, the present keeper of Potter's Field,
suspected that some person had entered it for the purpose of removing
the dead; and, after sending for two watchmen, and calling his faithful
dog, he went to ascertain the fact. On arriving at the grave, he found
his suspicion confirmed; and requested the person concealed in the pit,
to come out and show himself: no answer being given, Mr. Schureman sent
his dog into the pit, and in the twinkling of an eye a tall stout fellow
made his appearance, and took to his heels across the field. The night
being dark, he might have effected his escape, had it not been for the
sagacity and courage of the dog, who pursued him for some distance, but
at last came up with him, seized and held him fast, until the arrival of
Mr. Schureman and the watchmen, who secured him. The jury convicted the
prisoner, and the court sentenced him to six months' imprisonment in
the Penitentiary. _The young gentlemen attending the Medical School of
this city, will take warning by this man's fate. They may rest assured,
that the keeper of Potter's Field will do his duty, and public justice
will be executed on any man, whatever may be his condition in life, who
is found violating the law, and the decency of Christian burial!_" The
same paper gives the following account of a transaction, which took
place at Hartford, in Connecticut, May 17. "Yesterday morning, two
ladies were taking a walk in the South burying ground, when they
discovered a tape-string, and a piece of cloth, which upon examination
was found to be the piece that was laced upon Miss Jane Benton's face,
who came to her death by drowning, and was buried a few days since. The
ladies then went to the grave, and found that it had been
disturbed--that she was taken out of her coffin, and a rope around her
neck. The circumstance has produced great excitement in the public mind;
and every one is on the alert to discover the perpetrators of this
unfeeling, brutal act. _The citizens turned out in a body yesterday, and
interred the corpse again!_"
These scenes are highly disgraceful, and disgraceful to all, though not
_alike_ to all parties. We do not blame the Americans for abolishing the
practice of exhumation; but we blame them for stopping there. We
maintain, that it is both absurd and criminal, to make this practice
felony, without providing in some other method for the cultivation of
anatomy.
In Great Britain, the law against the practice of exhumation is not
allowed to slumber. There may be other cases which have not come to our
knowledge; but we have ascertained that there have been 14 convictions
for England alone, during the last year. The punishments inflicted have
been imprisonment for various periods, with fines of different sums. The
fines in general are heavy, considering the poverty of the offenders.
Several persons are, at this moment, suffering these penalties; among
others, there is now in the gaol of St. Alban's, a man who was sentenced
for this offence to two years' imprisonment, and a fine of twenty
pounds. The period of his confinement has expired some time; but he
still remains in prison, on account of his inability to pay the fine.[1]
Since the passing of the new Vagrant act, it has been the common
practice to commit these offenders to hard labour for various periods.
Very lately, two men, convicted of this offence, were sent to the Tread
Mill, in Cold Bath Fields; one of whom died in one month after his
commitment. It is an error to suppose that these punishments operate to
prevent exhumation; their only effect is to raise the price of subjects:
a little reflection will show that they can have no other operation. At
present, exhumation is the only method by which subjects for dissection
can be procured; but subjects for this purpose must be procured: and be
the difficulties what they may, will be procured: diseases will occur,
operations must be performed, medical men must be educated, anatomy must
be studied, dissections must go on. Unless some other means for
affording a supply be adopted; whatever be the law or the popular
feeling, neither magistrates, nor judges, nor juries, will, or can, put
an entire stop to the practice. It is one, which, from the absolute
necessity of the case, must be allowed. What is the consequence? So long
as the practice of exhumation continues, a race of men must be trained
up to violate the law. These men must go out in company for the purpose
of nightly plunder, and plunder of the most odious kind, tending in a
peculiar and most alarming measure to brutify the mind, and to eradicate
every feeling and sentiment worthy of a man. This employment becomes a
school in which men are trained for the commission of the most daring
and inhuman crimes. Its operation is similar, but much worse than the
nightly banding to violate the game laws, because there is something in
the violation of the grave, which tends still more to degrade the
character and to harden the heart. This offence is connived at; nay, it
is rewarded; these men are absolutely paid to violate the law; and paid
by men of reputation and influence in society. The transition is but too
easy to the commission of other offences in the hope of similar
connivance, if not of similar reward.
It is an odious thing that the teachers of anatomy should be brought
into contact with such men: that they should be obliged to employ them,
and that they should even be in their power; which they are to such a
degree, that they are obliged to bear with the wantonness of their
tyranny and insult. All the clamour against these men, all the
punishment inflicted on them, only operate to raise the premium on the
repetition of their offence. This premium the teachers of anatomy are
obliged to pay, which these men perfectly understand, who do not at all
dislike the opposition which is made to their vocation. It gives them no
unreasonable pretext for exorbitancy in their demands. In general, they
are men of infamous character; some of them are thieves, others are the
companions and abettors of thieves. Almost all of them are extremely
destitute. When apprehended for the offence in question, the teachers of
anatomy are obliged to pay the expenses of the trial, and to support
their families while they are in prison: whence the idea of immunity is
associated, in these men's minds, with the violation of the law, and
when they do happen to incur its penalties, they practically find that
they and their families are provided for, and this provision comes to
them in the shape of a reward for the commission of their offence. The
operation of such a system on the minds of the individuals themselves is
exceedingly pernicious, and is not a little dangerous to the community.
Moreover, by the method of exhumation, the supply after all is scanty;
it is never adequate to the wants of the schools; it is of necessity
precarious, and it sometimes fails altogether for several months. But it
is of the utmost importance that it should be abundant, regular, and
cheap.--The number of young men who come annually to London for the
purpose of studying medicine and surgery, may be about a thousand. Their
expenses are necessarily very considerable while in town; they have
already paid a large sum for their apprenticeship in the country; the
circumstances of country practitioners, in general, can but ill afford
protracted expenses for their sons in London; few of them stay a month
longer than the time prescribed by the College of Surgeons. But the
short period they spend in London, is the only time they have for
acquiring the knowledge of their profession. If they mispend these
precious hours, or if the means of employing them properly be denied
them, they must necessarily remain ignorant for life. After they leave
London they have no means of dissecting. We have seen that it is by
dissecting alone, that they can make themselves acquainted even with the
principles of their art; that without it they cannot so much as avail
themselves of the opportunities of improvement, which experience itself
may offer, nor, without the highest temerity, perform a single
operation. We have seen that occasions suddenly occur, which require the
prompt performance of important and difficult operations; we have seen
that unless such operations are performed immediately, and with the
utmost skill, life is inevitably lost. In many such cases, there is no
time to send for other assistance. If a country practitioner (and most
of these young men go to the country) be not himself capable of doing
what is proper to be done, the death of the patient is certain. We put
it to the reader to imagine what the feelings of an ingenuous young man
must be, who is aware of what he ought to do, but who is conscious that
his knowledge is not sufficient to authorise him to attempt to perform
it, and who sees his patient die before him, when he knows that he might
be saved, and that it would have been in his own power to save him, had
he been properly educated. We put it to the reader to conceive what his
own sensations would be, were an ignorant surgeon, with a rashness more
fatal than the criminal modesty of the former, to undertake an important
operation--Suppose it were a tumor, which turned out to be an aneurism;
suppose it were a hernia, in operating on which the epigastric artery
were divided, or the intestine itself wounded: suppose it were his
mother, his wife, his sister, his child, whom he thus saw perish before
his eyes, what would the reader then think of the prejudice which
withholds from the surgeon that information, without which the practice
of his profession is murder?
The study of anatomy is a severe and laborious study; the practice of
dissection is on many accounts highly repulsive: it is even not without
danger to life itself.[2] To men of clear understandings, to those
especially of a philosophical turn of mind, the pursuit is its own
reward; they are so fully satisfied, that the more it is cultivated the
more satisfaction it will afford, that they need no stimulus to induce
them to undergo the drudgery. But this is by no means the case with
ordinary minds. The fatigue and disgust of the dissecting-room, are
appalling to them, and they need the stimulus of necessity to urge them
to the task. The court of examiners of the College of Surgeons, requires
from the candidates for surgical diplomas certificates that they have
gone through at least two courses of dissections; the examiners at
Apothecaries'-hall do not require such certificates. The consequence is,
that many young men content themselves with attending lectures, and with
passing their examinations at Apothecaries'-hall, and do not apply for a
diploma at the College of Surgeons. This single fact is sufficient to
demonstrate to the public, that instead of throwing obstacles in the way
of dissection, it is a duty which they owe to themselves to afford every
possible facility to its practice, and to hold out to every member of
the profession, the most powerful inducements to engage in it, by
rewarding with confidence those who cultivate anatomy, by making
excellence in anatomy indispensable to all offices in dispensaries and
hospitals, and by thus rendering it impossible for any one who is
ignorant of anatomy, to obtain rank in his profession. When a candidate
presents himself for a diploma in Denmark, in his first trial he is put
into a room with a subject, a case of instruments, and a memorandum, and
informed that he is to display the anatomy of the face and neck, or that
of the upper extremity or that of the lower extremity: that by the
anatomy is to be understood, the blood-vessels, nerves, and muscles; and
that as soon as he has accomplished his task, the professors will
attend his summons to judge of his attainments. These professors are the
true examiners!