Dr. Shippen was not alone in this misfortune, for Monro was mobbed in 1725, Macartney in Dublin many years after, and Sir Astley Cooper and others have barely escaped it, besides all the fights and riots in which students and resurrectionists have been involved. These troubles point to a difficulty which from the dawn of practical anatomy has always been felt. The problem how to obtain a sufficient knowledge of anatomy and yet not to do violence to the feelings of the community is one difficult of solution. Had all anatomists been even so gallant as Riolan, physician to Louis XIII, who dissected females only on couches of germander, daphne, clematis, and thyme, and entombed them in their floral beds,* yet the difficulty would not have been overcome. The problem was only solved by the anatomy acts which were passed in England in 1832,† on the continent at various periods some years before, and in this country by Massachusetts in 1831 and New York soon after.§ But these acts were only obtained after the community had been driven to it, not only by the repeated violations of the public peace and public feelings, but also by repeated crimes.

When a student with Sylvius in Paris, Vesalius had to prowl around the places of execution and spoil the gallows of its victims, and to retain his booty was sometimes obliged

pendix, p. 217. For many other interesting facts in the early history of anatomy in this country, see Prof. A. B. Crosby's address before the New Hampshire Medical Society (1870).

* Riolan's Enchiridium, quoted by Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 31.

For this act, known as the Warburton Act, see the Lancet, 1831-32,

p. 713.

For copy, see Am. Journ. Med. Sci., vol. viii, 1831, p. 264.

§ The Pennsylvania Anatomy Act was passed in 1883. It is, I believe, the best in the United States. Under its provisions we have now an ample supply of cadavera, while its provisions carefully prevent wounding the sensibilities of the community. For the full text of the Act see Medical News, Aug. 11, 1883, p. 167, Pamphlet Laws of Penna., 1883, p. 119; and with an amendment in Purdon's Digest, vol. i, p. 106.

to hide the bodies even in his own bed.* The more enlightened, though cautious rulers and legislative bodies, soon provided a partial supply. The first recognized source, and until the present century the only legal one, was from executed criminals an illustration of which may be seen in Hogarth's "Reward of Cruelty." But Cortesius tells us about 1600, that so jealously guarded was this privilege (in Messina) that in twenty-four years he could but twice dissect a subject, and then under great difficulties and in great haste. What a contrast to the five thousand now annually dissected in Paris alone!‡

In England it was not till the reign of George II, in 1726, § that all criminals, instead of a few, were given for dissection. This act was in force till 1832, but this source of supply was insufficient even when executions were more frequent than now. In all Great Britain, from 1805 to 1820, there were executed eleven hundred and fifty criminals, or about seventyseven annually; and at the same time there were over one thousand medical students in London and nearly as many in Edinburgh. The result was a natural one. The graveyards were rifled; and, as the demand was a permanent one, there arose a set of the lowest possible villains who provided a permanent supply the resurrectionists-a race of men now happily almost extinct.

At first but few in number, they soon rapidly increased, till in 1828 there were in London over one hundred regular resurrectionists, || besides many occasional volunteers; and their trade was so extensive that, if the police were more than usually vigilant in Edinburgh or Dublin, they would supply those more distant schools. Their skill was such that

* Morley's Life of Jerome Cardan, vol. ii,

† Hunter's Introd. Lect., pp. 41-42.

P. 11.

Hosp. and Surgeons of Paris, by F. C. Stewart, pp. 144, 145.

§ 9 George II, cap. 31, Lancet, 1834-35, vol. i, p. 356.

|| Lancet, 1828–29, p. 793.

no obstacle was insuperable. The police watched the grounds -they were either bribed or made drunk; relatives replaced them but a half-hour's unwary slumber on the part of the weary watcher was enough for an adept; high walls were built-they scaled them; spring-guns were set-they sent women as mourners to the funerals, who discovered the position of the pegs; a stone, an old branch, a blade of grass laid on a newly-made grave was made to act as a detective-but the practised eye of a regular would detect it in a moment, and replace it after the theft. So skillful were they that Sir Astley Cooper, in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee, declared that no matter what the social position of any person in England, he could obtain his body if he desired it*; and such villains were they that, for a respectable price, they would unhestitatingly make a subject of him, their best though unwilling patron. The laws against their crimes, and the vigilance of the police, had but one effect—not to stop the trade, but only to increase the cost of subjects.† The ordinary charge was from £7 to £10 apiece, but often this was largely increased. In 1826 the price was as high as £16 to £22; and sometimes when the police were unusually vigilant, even £30-$150-were paid for a single subject!‡ Their avarice was unbounded. Stimulated by the jealousy and rivalry of the various schools, they usually demanded a special fee at the beginning and the end of every session; and so necessary were they, that they were often paid as high as £50 to £60 in these special fees. In case anyone was imprisoned, his bail was paid, and often, also, an allowance

* Life of Sir A. Cooper, vol. i, p. 407.

So inadequate was the supply, that a serious proposal was made to import the subjects from France to Ireland. Lancet, 1826-27, p. 80.

Lancet, 1826-27, vol. ii, p. 80; and 1828-29, vol. i, pp. 434 and 563; 1837-38, vol. i, p. 589. Life of Sir A. Cooper, vol. i, pp. 361, 396, 397, 403. Some of the resurrectionists died rich. See A. Cooper's Life, vol. i, pp. 416-418.

of ten shillings per week was paid him while he was in jail. In one case recorded by Bransby Cooper, this was continued at least during two years.* But when any subject was specially desired by an enthusiastic anatomist, then was their carnival of extortion. In 1783, when O'Brien, the Irish giant (whose skeleton, eight feet four inches high, now adorns the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons), was in failing health, John Hunter sent his servant Howison to watch the disposition of the remains. This fact unfortunately coming to the knowledge of the patient, in his unbounded horror of the surgeon's scalpel he ordered that after death his body should be watched day and night till a leaden coffin could be made, in which he should be taken to sea and buried there. Soon afterwards he died, and the watchers were set. Howison, having discovered the tavern where they refreshed themselves when off duty, soon struck a bargain with one of them, that if his companions would agree to it, the body should be stolen at night, and for their consent the watchers were to receive £50. The others, satisfied with all but the price, demanded £100, which Hunter agreed to pay. Finding him so eager, they soon made other difficulties, and again and again increased the price until they had raised it to £500! Accordingly, the body was stolen at night, conveyed in Hunter's own carriage to his dissectingroom, and immediately prepared, but with such haste, for fear of interruption, that the bones could never be properly whitened.†

O'Brien's coffin was not the only one which contained what might be called a "foreign body" when the clergy performed the burial service. Such thefts became a regular part of the trade, and if a night intervened between the finding of a body and the holding of a coroner's inquest, the body was liable to

* Sir A. Cooper's Life, pp. 360-362 and 369.

† Otley's Life of John Hunter, pp. 106, 107, in Palmer's Ed. of Hunter's Works, London, 1835.

disappear, and the resurrectionist often attended the inquest to see the astonishment of the jury. Sometimes they picked up cases of apoplexy in the street, carried them to one of the hospitals as relatives of the patient, claimed the body after death, and quickly assuaged their grief with guineas from the anatomical school of another hospital. Patrick, one of the most celebrated of the gang, for some months carried on successfully the ruse of claiming relationship with dying men and women, whose names he ascertained, in the various workhouses, and his career was only cut short by the jealousy of a rival named Murphy, who denounced him to the authorities. But Murphy himself adopted a similar plan on another occasion. Observing one day, while walking, a neat meetinghouse with a paved burial-ground, in which was a trap-door, he soon returned in a suit of solemn black, seeking a quiet sanctuary for the remains of his wife. Descending into the vault to select the place of her repose, while the back of the sexton was turned he quietly slipped the bolts of the trapdoor, and that very night, entering the vault by this means, he rifled every body there of the teeth, which, as porcelain teeth were then unknown, he sold to the dentists at a net gain of £60. Once, a body stolen from the grave was sold to Lizars, in Edinburgh, and paid for; was re-stolen from Lizars's dissecting-room the same night and sold to Knox; the scoundrels netting £25 in all, and without the possible fear of indictment, least of all for their second theft!

Sometimes adventurous students carried the plunder home in hackney-coaches, and this gave rise occasionally to amusing adventures. On one occasion, the hackman, aware of the illegal nature of his passenger's baggage, having arrived opposite the Bow Street police headquarters, thrust his head in at the window, and said to the uneasy occupant, "The fare, sir, to the hospital is a guinea, you know, unless you wish to be put down here." "Quite right, my man, drive on," was the unhesitating reply.