Mr. Warburton's anatomy bill : thoughts on its mischievous tendency : with suggestions for an entirely new one, founded upon an available anti-septic process, in an appeal to medical practitioners, students of anatomy, and the public at large, on the injury to medical science and the hinderances to the decent interment of unclaimed pauper bodies now delivered up for anatomical "examination," consequent upon the rejection of such a process / by William Roberts.

  • Roberts, W. (William)
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. Warburton's anatomy bill : thoughts on its mischievous tendency : with suggestions for an entirely new one, founded upon an available anti-septic process, in an appeal to medical practitioners, students of anatomy, and the public at large, on the injury to medical science and the hinderances to the decent interment of unclaimed pauper bodies now delivered up for anatomical "examination," consequent upon the rejection of such a process / by William Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    18/128 (page 12)
    Again the Bill says not one syllable about how the bodies were to be distributed^ so that if the Inspector had used all his influence to give any one hospital a monopoly^ he would not have acted illegally. The framers of the Bill^ no doubt^ had excellent reasons for laying down no rules for equitable dis- tribution—the gentlemen who had embarked in private Schools were soon made sensible of this. The Anatomy BiU of 1832^ in whatever point of view re- gardedj was a fraud deliberately practised upon the poorer classes. The interposition of the Legislature^ had long been imperatively called for; about that^ their cannot be tw^o opinions. But the first step should have been to appropriate, for the purpose of Anatomical Science, all the bodies of con- victed felons happening to die during the period of their in- carceration. There is no reason to doubt that, under proper arrangements, an ample supply might have been derived from that source. But, supposing that had not been found to be the case, the Legislature might have gone one step farther, and have enacted that the bodies of deceased persons, unclaimed by any known relative or friend, and, in the regular course of things, chargeable to parishes or public institutions for their interment, should be made liable to be submitted to post-mor- tem examination. In the absence, however, of an Anti-septic Process, the period during which the body might have been kept uninterred should have been limited to seven days, and its treatment should have been restricted to such ordinary post-mortem examination, as would allow of the entire body being decently sewed up and put together again, as in the case of a body opened and examined by consent of friends and relatives. And nothing should have been done that would destroy, or render difficult, the proof of identity. To talk of the decent interment, and the christian burial of a body, where less than this is done, is only to insult the memory of the dead, and to make a mockery and farce