Address to the community, on the necessity of legalizing the study of anatomy / by order of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

  • Massachusetts Medical Society.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the community, on the necessity of legalizing the study of anatomy / by order of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    than common learning, to be burdened with oppres¬ sive and unnecessary restrictions, and in a fair way to be buried in the tombs of our fathers. Until the last ten or fifteen years, some opportu¬ nities for dissection have been afforded to zealous and laborious students. The revolutionary war qualified a considerable number of men to act as surgeons;—men whose memory, whose instruc¬ tions, and whose bright example are still cherished amongst us. Dissections were afterwards privately carried on to keep up the knowledge these persons had acquired in actual service ;—though, to a small extent, the late war with Great Britain likewise was productive of some of the same results. So that it may be said, there has been a stock of anatomical knowledge laid up by the enterprizing and industrious of the generation who occupy the advanced portion of medical experience, obtained when the laws were less severe, and dissection was winked at, if not countenanced. About the close of the last war, medical schools began to be estab¬ lished in this part of the country, and that alarm began to be excited, which occasioned the Legisla¬ ture to pass severe laws against the robbing of grave-yards, which had not before been recognized as a crime. This alarm was much increased by several instances of unjustifiable and mercenary removal of the bodies of very improper subjects. And the penalties annexed to our laws have been, from time to time, increased, till it has become scarcely more hazardous to assault the bodies of the living, than those of the dead. It is obvious then, some change must be effected in the present state of our laws ; 2