THE RISE OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOLS.
The anatomical lectures given by the Barber-Surgeons and Physicians were for a long time the only sources of practical anatomical knowledge; but the want of more opportunities for dissecting began in time to be felt by the apprentices of the surgeons employed at the hospitals. In the later days of the Barber-Surgeons’ Company difficulties were experienced in obtaining subjects for dissection, and there is evidence to show that the officials having charge of executions were bribed to let the bodies of felons pass into private hands. William Cheselden (1688–1752) was one of the chief offenders in holding “private anatomies,” which were contrary to the rules of the Company. Cheselden was renowned as an anatomist and surgeon, and did much to perfect the operation of lateral lithotomy, and must be looked upon as the real founder of the medical school of St. Thomas’s. Before his time, however (viz., in 1695), complaint was made that the surgeons of St. Thomas’s taught surgery to other than their own apprentices; and in 1702 the governors of St. Thomas’s, while recognising the right of the surgeons to take pupils, ordained that “none shall have more than three cubbs at one time, nor take any for less than a year.” “Private anatomies” began gradually to be more common, and in 1717 we come upon a record of “body-snatching,” when “the widow of William Childers made complaint that her husband’s corps, after its buryal in the burying place in Moorfields, was taken up by the gravedigger and sold to some surgeons, which corps was stopped at an inn in a hamper to be sent to Oxford” (Church). In 1726 the anatomical museum at St. Bartholomew’s was commenced by John Freke, which is strong evidence of the growth of anatomical teaching, and in 1734 mention is made in the records of “the dissecting-room belonging to this house.”
It was not till 1750 that leave was obtained for the regular making of post-mortem examinations at St. Bartholomew’s. In 1767 an operating theatre was erected; and finally, in 1822, an anatomical theatre was built for John Abernethy, who was really the founder of the Medical School of St. Bartholomew’s.