On small narrow tables, in different parts of the large room, which, though lighted by a dome in the centre, required, in the deep darkness of a London fog, the additional aid of lamps, were extended some five and twenty human corpses in different stages of dissection. Groups of students were silently engaged with their scalpels in examining these wonderful temples of the still more wonderful human soul. Here a solitary individual, with his book open before him upon the corpse, followed the text upon the human subject, while there, two or three together were tracing with patient distinctness the course of the disease which had driven the spirit of life from its frail habitation. I observed one of the professors in his gold spectacles pointing out to a number of the students, gathered around one of the subjects, the evidences of an ossification of the great aorta, which had, after years of torture, necessarily terminated the life of the sufferer.—There was almost as much individuality in those corpses as if they had been living, and it required the most determined effort on my part to divest myself of the idea that they were sentient, and aware of all that was passing around them. I recollect, particularly, one, which was lying nearest the door as I entered;—it was the body of a man of about forty, with light hair, and fair complexion, who had been cut down in the midst of health. His face was as full, and his skin as white, as if he had been merely sleeping; but the knife had passed around his throat, down his body, and then in sections cross-ways; the internal muscles having been evidently exposed, and the skin temporarily replaced, during the casual absence of the dissector. There was something peculiarly horrid in the appearance of that corpse, as, aside from a ruffianly and dissolute expression of the features, the gash around his throat conveyed the impression that it was a murdered man lying before me. A good-looking, middle-aged female was extended just beyond, her long hair hanging down over the end of the table, but not as yet touched by the hand of the surgeon; while, just beyond her, the body of an old man, from which the upper part of the skull had been sawn to take out the brain, appeared to be grinning at us with a horrid sort of mirth. In another part of the room, directly over which the blackening body of an infant was thrown across a beam, like a piece of an old carpet, was extended the body of a gigantic negro; he lay upon his back, his legs somewhat apart, one of his arms thrown up so as to rest upon the top of his head, his eyes wide open, his nostrils distended, and his teeth clenched in a hideous grin. There was such evidence of strength, such giant development of muscle, such appearance of chained energy and ferocity about him, that, upon my soul, it seemed to me every moment as if he was about to spring up with a frantic yell, and throw himself upon us; and wherever I went about the room, my eyes still involuntarily turned, expecting to see that fierce negro drawing up his legs ready to bound, like a malignant demon, over the intervening space. He had been brought home for murder upon the high seas, but the jail-fever had anticipated the hand of the executioner, and his body of course was given over to the surgeons. A far different object lay on the floor near him; it was the body of a young girl of about eleven or twelve years old. The poor little creature had evidently died of neglect, and her body drawn up by the action of the flexor muscles into the form of a bow, stiffened in death, rocked forward and backward when touched by the foot; the sunken blue eyes staring sorrowfully and reproachfully upon us from the emaciated features. Beyond her, in most savage contrast, was thrown the carcass of a Bengal tiger, which had died a day or two before in the royal menagerie, his talons extending an inch beyond his paws, and there was about his huge distended jaws and sickly eyes, as perfect a portraiture of disease, and pain, and agony, as it has ever been my lot to witness in suffering humanity. There was no levity about the students, but, on the contrary, a sort of solemnity in their examinations; and when they spoke, it was in a low tone, as if they were apprehensive of disturbing the dead around them. I thought at the time that it would be well if some of those who sneer at the profession, could look in upon one of these even minor ordeals to which its followers are subjected in their efforts to alleviate the sufferings of their fellow-men.
As the hour for the lecture approached, the students one by one, closed their books, washed their hands, and descended to the lecture-room. We descended with the rest, and as we passed the grim porter, at the bottom of the stair-case, I observed in the corner behind him a number of stout bludgeons, besides several cutlasses and muskets. A popular commotion a short time previous, among some of the well-intentioned but ignorant of the lower classes, had induced the necessity of caution, and this preparation for resistance. Entering the lecture-room, we took our places on the third or fourth row of seats from the demonstrator’s table, upon which a subject was lying, covered with a white sheet, and had time, as the room gradually filled, to look about us. Besides the students, Lee pointed out to me several able professional gentlemen, advanced in life, who were attracted by the celebrity of the lecturer; among others, Abernethy and Sir Astley Cooper. Shortly after we had taken our seats, a slender, melancholy-looking young man, dressed in deep mourning, entered the circle in which we were seated, and took his place on the vacant bench at my side. He bowed reservedly to my companions as he passed them, but immediately on sitting down became absorbed in deep sadness. My friends returned his salute, but did not appear inclined to break into his abstraction. At the precise moment that the lecture was announced to be delivered, the tall form of the eminent surgeon was seen descending the alley of crowded seats to his chair. The lights in the various parts of the room were raised suddenly, throwing a glare on all around; and one of the skeletons, to which an accidental jar had been given, vibrated slowly forward and backward, while the other hung perfectly motionless from its cord. In his short and sententious manner, he opened the subject of the lecture, which was the cause, effect, and treatment of that scourge of our country—consumption. His remarks were singularly lucid and clear, even to me, a layman. After having gone rapidly through the pathology of the disease, consuming perhaps some twenty minutes of time, he said,—“We will now, gentlemen, proceed to demonstration upon the subject itself.” I shall not readily forget the scene that followed. As he slowly turned up the wristbands of his shirt sleeves, and bent over to select an instrument from the case at his side, he motioned to an assistant to withdraw the sheet that covered the corpse. Resuming his erect position, the long knife glittering in his hand, the sheet was slowly drawn off, exhibiting the emaciated features of an aged woman, her white hair parted smoothly in the middle of her forehead, passing around to the back of the head, beneath the plain white muslin cap. The silence which always arrests even the most frivolous in the presence of the dead, momentarily checked the busy hum of whispers around me, when I heard a gasp—a choking—a rattling in the throat, at my side; and the next instant, the young man sitting next to me, rose to his feet, threw his arms wildly upwards, and shrieking in a tone of agony, that caused every man’s heart in that assembly, momentarily to stop—“My m-o-t-h-e-r!”—plunged prostrate and stiff, head foremost upon those in front of him. All was instant consternation and confusion;—there was one present who knew him, but to the majority of the students, he was as much a stranger as he was to my friends. He was from one of the adjoining parishes of London, and two weeks before, had lost his mother, to whom he was much attached, and by fatal mischance, that mother lay extended before him, upon the demonstrator’s table. He was immediately raised, but entirely stiff and insensible, and carried into an adjoining room;—sufficient animation was at length restored to enable him to stand, but he stared vacantly about him, the great beads of sweat trickling down his forehead, without a particle of mind or memory. The lecture was of course closed, and the lifeless corse again entrusted to hands to replace it in its tomb. The young man, on the following day, was brought sufficiently to himself to have memory present the scene again to his mind, and fell almost immediately into a raging fever, accompanied with fierce and violent delirium; his fever gradually abated, and his delirium at intervals; but when I left London for the continent, three months after, he was rapidly sinking under the disease which carried off his mother—happily in a state of helpless and senseless idiocy; and in a very short time after, death relieved him from his misery. The whole scene was so thrilling and painful, that, connecting it in some measure with my introduction to Lee, his presence always recalled it to my memory.
THE RESURRECTIONISTS.
As we returned to our lodgings, our conversation naturally turned upon the agitating event that we had just witnessed, and the extreme caution necessary in the procuring of subjects for anatomical examination. Lee related an occurrence that had happened to Dr. ——, a gentleman of high standing in South Carolina.
Shortly after the American revolution, he visited Europe for the purpose of pursuing his medical studies, and was received into the family of the same distinguished gentleman, whom we had just heard lecture, then beginning to rise to eminence and notice; an advantage which was necessarily confined to a very few. In one of the dark and stormy nights of December, Mr. Hunter and his wife having been called to the bedside of a dying relative in the country, as Dr. —— was quietly sitting at the parlour fire, absorbed in his studies, he was aroused by a hurried ring at the street door, and rising, went to answer it himself. Upon opening the door, a hackney coach, with its half-drowned horses, presented itself at the side of the walk, and two men, in slouched hats and heavy sailor coals dripping with water, standing upon the steps, inquired in a low tone if he wanted a subject. Being answered in the affirmative, they opened the carriage door, lifted out the body, which was enveloped in a sack, and having carried it up stairs to the dissecting-room, which was in the garret, received the two guineas which they had demanded, and withdrew. The affair was not unusual, and Dr. —— resuming his book, soon forgot the transaction. About eleven o’clock, while still absorbed in his studies, he heard a violent female shriek in the entry, and the next instant the servant maid, dashing open the door, fell senseless upon the carpet at his feet, the candlestick which she held, rolling some distance as it fell.
Perceiving that the cause of alarm, whatever it might be, was without, he caught up the candlestick, and, jumping over her prostrate form, rushed into the hall where an object met his view which might well have tried the nerves of the strongest man. Standing half-way down the stair-case, was a fierce, grim-looking man, perfectly naked, his eyes glaring wildly and fearfully from beneath a coarse shock of dark hair, which, nearly concealing a narrow forehead, partially impeded a small stream of blood trickling down the side of the face, from a deep scratch in the temple. In one hand he grasped a sharp long belt-knife, such as is used by riggers and sailors, the other holding on by the bannister, as he somewhat bent over to meet the gaze of the Doctor rushing into the entry. The truth flashed across the mind of Dr. —— in an instant, and with admirable presence of mind, he made one spring, catching the man by the wrist which held the knife, in a way that effectually prevented his using it. “In the name of God! where am I?” demanded the man in a horror-stricken voice, “am I to be murdered?” “Silence!—not a whisper,” sternly answered Dr. ——, looking him steadily in the eyes—“Silence—and your life is safe.”—Wrenching the knife from his hand, he pulled him by the arm passively along into the yard, and hurrying through the gate, first ran with him through one alley, then into another, and finally rapidly through a third, till coming to an outlet upon one of the narrow and unfrequented streets, he gave him a violent push,—retracing his steps again on the wings of the wind, pulling too, and doubly locking the gate behind him, leaving the object of his alarm perfectly bewildered and perplexed, and entirely ignorant of the place from whence he had been so summarily ejected. The precaution and presence of mind of Dr. ——, most probably saved the house of Mr. Hunter from being torn down and sacked by the mob, which would have been instantly collected around it, had the aggrieved party known where to have led them to wreak his vengeance.
After a few days, inquiry was carefully and cautiously made through the police, and it was ascertained that three men answering the description of the resurrectionists and their victim had been drinking deeply through the afternoon, in one of the low dens in the neighbourhood of Wapping; that one had sunk into a stupid state of intoxication, and had, in that situation, been stripped and placed in a sack by his companions, a knife having been previously placed in his hand that he might relieve himself from his confinement upon his return to sensibility; and that in addition to the poor wretch’s clothes, they had realized the two guineas for his body.
It is certainly painful, that the requirements of suffering humanity should make the occasional violation of the grave indispensably necessary. Whether the spirit, released from its confinement, lies in the limbo of the fathers, the purgatory of the Catholics, awaiting the great day of doom; whether called from a life of virtue, all time and distance annihilated, it sweeps free and unconstrained in heavenly delight through the myriads and myriads of worlds, rolling in the vast sublimity of space; whether summoned from a course of evil, it shudders in regions of darkness and desolation, or writhes in agony amid flaming atmospheres; or whether its germ of life remains torpid, as in the wheat taken from the Egyptian pyramids, thousands of years existent, but apparently not sentient, must, of course, be to us but the wild theories of imagination, and so remain until that judgment, predicted by the holy Revelation, shall sweep away the darkness with which, in inscrutable and awful wisdom, the Almighty has enveloped us.
But that the spirit can look with other than indifference, if not loathing, on the perishing exuviæ of its chrysalis existence, which, to its retrospective gaze, presents little other than a tasking house of base necessities, a chained prison of cruel disappointments, even to our human reason, clogged as it is with bars and contradictions, appears hardly to admit the opportunity of question, and of consequence to that spirit its disposition can but be a matter of indifference. Still, to the surviving friends, whose affection cannot separate mind from matter, those forms lying in the still and silent tomb, retain all their dear associations, and surely it most gravely becomes the members of that profession, which, next to the altar, stands foremost in benevolence, that the deepest prudence should be exercised in this gloomy rite required by the living from the dead.