Use of the Dead to the Living

by Southwood Smith

In antient times the voice of reason could not be heard. Superstition, and customs founded on superstition, excited an influence which was neither to be resisted nor evaded. Dissection was then regarded with horror. In the warm countries of the east, the pursuit must have been highly offensive and even dangerous, and it was absolutely incompatible with the notions and ceremonies universally prevalent in those days. The Jewish tenet of pollution must have formed an insuperable obstacle to the cultivation of anatomy amongst that people. By the Egyptians, every one who cut open a dead body was regarded with inexpressible horror. The Grecian philosophers so far overcame the prejudice, as occasionally to engage in the pursuit, and the first dissection on record was one made by Democritus of Abdera, the friend of Hippocrates, in order to discover the course of the bile. The Romans contributed nothing to the progress of the art: they were content with propitiating the Deities who presided over health and disease. They erected on the Palatine Mount a temple to the goddess Febris, whom they worshipped from a dread of her power. They also sacrificed to the goddess Ossipaga, who, it seems, presided over the growth of the bones, and to another styled Carna, who took care of the viscera, and to whom they offered bean broth and bacon, because these were the most nutritious articles of diet. The Arabians adopted the Jewish notion of pollution, and were thus prohibited by the tenets of their religion from practising dissection. Abdollaliph, who flourished about the year 1200, a man of learning and a teacher of anatomy, never saw and never thought of a human dissection. In order to examine and demonstrate the bones, he took his students to burying grounds, and earnestly recommended them, instead of reading books, to adopt that method of study: yet he seemed to have no conception that the dissection of a recent subject might be a still better method of learning. Christians were equally hostile to dissection. Pope Boniface the 8th issued a bull prohibiting even the maceration and preparation of skeletons. The priests were the only physicians, and so greatly did they abuse the office they assumed, that the evil at length became too intolerable to be borne. The church itself was obliged to prohibit the priesthood from interfering with the practice of medicine. All monks and canons who applied themselves to physic, were threatened with severe penalties, and all bishops, abbots, and priors who connived at their misconduct, were ordered to be suspended from their ecclesiastical functions. But it was not till three hundred years after this interdiction, that by a special bull which permitted physicians to marry, their complete separation from the clergy was effected.

In the 14th century, Mundinus, professor at Bologna, astonished the 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.