The Chirurgeon's Apprentice

‘When people first discover that I am a historian of medicine, they often falter as they try to process this information. Most of the time, the response is: “That’s a real job?” It is an innocent reaction, not intended to be insulting, and is usually followed by a barrage of questions about my research. What kind of work does a historian of medicine do? Were people really bled by leeches in the past? How long did it take surgeons to amputate a limb before the discovery of anaesthetics? At the end of these conversations, one thing is always clear. They want to know more.’

Read the article recently featured in Wellcome History (pp. 12-13) about The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice!

Posted in Casebooks

The sharp pinch of a large needle piercing the tender flesh inside the mouth. The high-pitched sound of a drill shattering tooth enamel. The metallic taste of blood. The smell of antiseptics.  The loss of sensation in the lips, tongue, and cheek. The swelling, the bruising, the pain.

For many, there is nothing to be dreaded more than a trip to the dentist’s office.

So it probably came as a surprise when I asked Dr Timothy King to take pictures of a procedure I was undergoing this past week. After all, most people would like to forget the experience as soon as it is over. But as I lay there—my mouth stretched into an inhuman grimace—I started to think back to the 17^th century, and to the barber-surgeons who used to be the guardians of oral health.

Just like today, tooth decay was an unpleasant part of life in the past. Unlike today, however, there was not a lot that could be done to prevent it. Most people who found themselves with a toothache ended up in the hands of the local barber-surgeon, who would then extract the rotten tooth sans anaesthetic. Before the 18^th century, this often involved tying a string around the tooth; a drum might be played in the background to distract the patient, getting louder as the moment of extraction grew nearer.

To advertise their services as ‘tooth-pullers’, many barber-surgeons hung rows of rotten teeth outside their shops. In 1727, the poet John Gay, wrote:

His pole, with pewter basins hung,

Black, rotten teeth in order strung,

Rang’d cups that in the window stood,

Lin’d with red rags, to look like blood,

Did well his threefold trade explain,

Who shav’d, drew teeth, and breath’d a vein.

As time wore on, new techniques were invented for extracting teeth. The tooth key (right) was first mentioned in Alexander Monro’s Medical Essays and Observations in 1742. The claw was placed over the top of the decaying tooth; the bolster, or the long metal rod, was placed against the root. The key was then turned and, if all went well, the tooth would pop out of the socket. Unfortunately, this did not always go to plan. Often, the tooth shattered as the key was turned and had to be plucked from the bleeding gum tissue piece by piece.

Of course, the loss of a tooth could leave a person aesthetically challenged.  Wealthy patrons were increasingly unhappy to go around in public with missing teeth. In the 18^th century, surgeons began experimenting with implants. Patients who could afford it might choose between ‘live’ or ‘dead’ teeth.  With the former, the recipient would have his or her rotten tooth removed before a ‘selection of donors’, who would then have their own teeth extracted until one was found that was ‘deemed acceptable in appearance’. Afterwards, the tooth was inserted into the empty socket and fixed using a silver wire or silk ligatures. [1]

Although desirable, having a ‘live’ tooth implanted into one’s mouth was a costly endeavour. For the thrifty costumer, teeth extracted from the mouths of the dead proved cheaper. According to one resurrectionist, ‘It is the constant practice to take the teeth out first…because if the body be lost, the teeth are saved’. [2] During the 19^th century, a good set of teeth could fetch as much as 5 guineas. Indeed, the practice was so profuse that one Professor of Anatomy at Trinity College remarked, ‘very many of the upper ranks carry in their mouths teeth which have been buried in the hospital fields’. [3]  Unfortunately for some unlucky recipients, syphilis and tuberculosis were unknowingly transmitted into their mouths from infected donors.

Dentistry, as we understand it today, did not emerge as a licensed profession until the end of the 19^th century. That said, one need not suffer in the past with a toothache as long as a barber-surgeon was at hand. For little cost and a lot of pain, the rotten tooth could be extracted and put on display in front of the barber’s shop.

As Dr King began drilling into my tooth, I was blissfully unaware of any pain.  In fact, sitting there in the heated office as the novacaine worked its magic, I nearly fell asleep.

I have never felt happier to live in the 21^st century… Although I do think Dr King should consider putting the rotten teeth of his patients on display outside his office door!

1. Roger King, ‘John Hunter and The Natural History of Human Teeth: Dentistry, Digestion, and the Living Principle’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 49 (1994), p. 510.

2. York Chronicle, 1831. Originally quoted in Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (1987), p. 67.

3. Quoted in Richardson, Death, p. 106.

Posted in Casebooks

In 1746, Jacques-Bénigne Winslow wrote: ‘Tho’ Death, at some Time or other, is the necessary and unavoidable Portion of Human Nature in its present Condition, yet it is not always certain, that Persons taken for dead are really and irretrievably deprived of Life’. Indeed, the Danish anatomist went on to claim that it was ‘evident from Experience’ that those thought to be dead have proven otherwise ‘by rising from their Shrowds [sic], their Coffins, and even from their Graves’. [1]

Fears over premature burial were ubiquitous in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  In 1792, the first ‘safety coffin’ was constructed for Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick which included a window to allow light in and a tube to provide a fresh supply of air. The lid of the coffin was then locked and two keys were fitted into a special pocket sewn into his burial shroud: one for the coffin itself and one for the tomb.  Similar constructions followed, including coffins designed with signalling mechanisms to allow the person buried below to notify those above that he or she was not dead.

Perhaps even worse than premature burial was the thought of being dissected while still alive. The 19^th-century physician and surgeon, Sir Robert Christison, complained that dissection in St Bartholomew’s Hospital was ‘apt to be performed with indecent, sometimes with dangerous haste’.  He wrote:

It was no uncommon occurrence that, when the operator proceeded with his work, the body was sensibly warm, the limbs not yet rigid, the blood in the great vessels fluid and coagulable [sic]. I remember an occasion when [William] Cullen commenced the dissection of a man who died on hour before, and when fluid blood gushed in abundance from the first incision through the skin…Instantly I seized his wrist in great alarm, and arrested his progress; nor was I easily persuaded to let him go on, when I saw the blood coagulate on the table exactly like living blood’. [2]

The 17^th and 18^th centuries were rife with stories about executed criminals who had ‘returned from the dead’ just moments before being dissected.  In 1651, Anne Greene was hanged in Oxford for infanticide. For thirty minutes, she dangled at the end of the noose while her friends’ thump[ed] her breast’ and put ‘their weight upon her leggs [sic]…lifting her up and then pulling her downe againe with a suddain jerke’ in order to quicken her death. Afterwards, her body was cut down from the gallows and brought to Drs Thomas Willis and William Petty to be dissected. Just seconds before Willis plunged the knife into her sternum, Anne miraculously awoke. [For more about Anne Greene, click here]. [3]

Anatomists, themselves, worried about the precise moment of death when cutting open the bodies of the recently dead. To avoid disaster, Winslow suggested that a person’s gums be rubbed with caustic substances, and that the body be ‘stimulate[d]…with Whips and Nettles’ before being dissected. Furthermore, the anatomist should ‘irritate his Intestines by Means of Clysters and Injections of Air or Smoke, as well as ‘agitate…the Limbs by violent Extensions and Inflexions’. If possible, an attempt should also be made to ‘shock [the person’s] Ears by hideous Shrieks and excessive Noises’. [4]

To our modern sensibilities, these measures may seem extreme, even comical, but to Winslow, this was no laughing matter. In fact, he went even further, recommending that the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet be pricked with needles, and that the ‘Scapulae, Shoulders and Arms’ be scarified using fire or sharp instruments so as to ‘lacerate and strip [them] of the epidermis’ [5].  Indeed, when reading Winslow’s work, one gets the innate feeling that he took pleasure in imaging new ways to torture the dead.

That said, it wasn’t just medical practitioners who came up with ways of testing whether a person was dead or not. Family and friends of the deceased also devised methods for ensuring that their loved ones were not prematurely buried, including shouting the name of the person and poking his or her eyes. Most commonly, the body of the recently deceased was watched for a period of 3 days before burial, during which time putrefaction and decay would have become evident.

Of course, there were situations that warranted immediate burial of the body, as in the case of plague victims. In these instances, there was no time to wait for the body to begin decomposing. In his book, Winslow recalls the story of a man in Rome whom, upon being ‘accounted dead’, was to be ‘interred with the utmost Expedition’. As his body was being carried over the Tiber River to the plague pit, the boatman ‘discovered some Signs of Life’ and brought the young man back to the hospital ‘where he perfectly recovered Life’. Two days later, however, the man fell back into a similar state and was ‘judged irreparably dead’. His body was ‘without any farther [sic] Hesitation laid among those destin’d for the Grave’. Once again, to the horror of those around him, the man ‘returned to Life’ and escaped premature burial for a second time. [6]

Recently, archaeologists found evidence that bronze pins were implanted in the ‘palmar surface of the hands, scapular area, under the plantar surface of the feet, and…under the toe nails’ of plague victims in Marseilles.  The position of the skeletons in the mass graves also suggest that the dead were given ‘fast burials’ as rigor mortis, which typically appears six hours after death, had not set in before the plague pit was covered over.  In the midst of a plague outbreak, one can easily imagine how some people may have been mistaken for dead before being dumped into a pit of rotting corpses. [7]

Today, our societal fears over premature burial have dwindled considerably. However, new debates have arisen over the very definition of death itself with the emergence of ‘beating heart cadavers’. Though considered dead in both a medical and legal capacity, these ‘cadavers’ are kept on ventilators for organ and tissue transplantation.  Their hearts beat; they expel waste; they have the ability to heal themselves of infection; they can even carry a foetus to term.  Crucially, though, their brains are no longer functioning. It is in this way that the medical community has redefined death in the 21^st century. [8]

Yet, some wonder whether these ‘beating heart cadavers’ are really dead, or whether they are just straddling the great divide between life and death before the finally lights go out.

1. Jacques-Bénigne Winslow, The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death, and the Danger of Precipitate Interments and Dissections (1746), pp. 1-2.

2. R. Christison, The Life of Sir Robert Christison (1885-6), pp. 192-3. Originally quoted in Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (2000), p. 98.

3. Richard Watkins, News from the Dead (1651), p. 2.

4. Winslow, The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death, p. 21.

5. Ibid., p. 23.

6. Ibid., pp. 4-5.

7. Georges Leonetti, et al., ‘Evidence of Pin Implantation as a Means of Verifying Death During the Great Plague of Marseilles (1722)’, in Journal of Forensic Science 42:4 (1997), pp. 744 – 748.

8. For more on ‘beating heart cadavers’ and new definitions of death, see Dick Teresi, The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating-Heart Cadavers—How Medicine is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death (2012).

Posted in Casebooks

It is just before midnight on Thursday, the 19^th of April, 1792. Mary Hunt—a 25-year-old servant to a gentleman in Bedford Square (below)—paces her room nervously. On her bedside table lays a small vial of white arsenic. Her mind races, her heart pounds. A moment of weakness has left her desperate and alone. Her lover—a footman in the same household—has rejected her. Now, it is only a matter of time before the news of her pregnancy reaches the ears of her master.

She clutches her midriff, staring at the bottle of arsenic before her. For a moment, she imagines she might weather the storm. But then she glimpses her future self, dirty and unkempt, selling her body to rough men in the back-alleys of London in order to feed her and her baby. Her cheeks burn in shame. There is no way out.

She picks up the vial, closes her eyes, and swallows the contents. Her hands tremble slightly as she reaches for an uncorked bottle of wine by her bed. She drinks nearly a quart to calm her nerves.

She waits.

Around 1 o’clock in the morning, she begins screaming in agony. Terrible pain tears through her stomach. She doubles over and begins vomiting. The household is awakened and a doctor is called to her bedside. She complains of excessive thirst and is given several quarts of brandy and water. She thrashes around in bed, breaking out into a cold sweat, as her body tries to purge itself of the poison. After hours of excruciating pain, she slips into unconsciousness. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, her body begins convulsing as saliva collects in her throat. She looses the ability to swallow, and starts to drown in her own fluids.

Thirteen hours after ingesting the arsenic, Mary Hunt dies a violent, agonizing death. [1]

Suicide—or ‘self-murder’ as it was sometimes called—was not uncommon in 18^th-century England. Indeed, the English were renowned for it. The French philosopher, Montesquieu, once quipped: ‘We do not find in history that the Romans ever killed themselves without a cause; but the English are apt to commit suicide most unaccountably; they destroy themselves even in the bosom of happiness’. [2] Others agreed. The writer, Beat Louis de Muralt, claimed that the English ‘die by their own hands with as much indifference as by another’s’ and for reasons ‘that would appear to us but as Trifles’. [3]

While this characterisation may not be entirely accurate, there is some truth in it. Despite the social stigma associated with suicide, people were still finding new (and terrible) ways to end their lives in the 18^th century. Consuming arsenic was just one of them.

For reasons unexplained in the case records, Mary Hunt’s body ends up in the hands of the surgeon, Thomas Ogle. It may be that Mary had no family, and that her employer was unwilling to take on her burial costs. The fact that she had committed suicide also meant that it was unlikely Mary would have been afforded a Christian burial, although this certainly wasn’t always the case. For these reasons, however, it is likely that her employer may have found it easier (and more profitable) to hand her remains over to Ogle, who then performed an autopsy and dissection.

In his report, Ogle remarked that her stomach contained ‘a greenish fluid, with a curdy substance…an effect produced by the arsenic’. He also noted that there was ‘an uncommon quantity of blood in the vessels of the ovaria and Fallopian tubes’ and that it was ‘evident, from this circumstance, that conception had taken place’. Nevertheless, when told that the date of her last period had only been ‘a little more than a month before her death’, Ogle began to question whether Mary had been pregnant when she died. [4]

Curious to know the truth, Ogle removed the ‘organs of generation’ and gave them over to the famous anatomist, John Hunter, whose interest in pregnant cadavers was well known. Hunter injected the arteries and smaller vessels of the uterus with a wax-like substance so that ‘the whole surface became extremely red’. The uterus was then split open and the ‘inner surface of the cavity…was examined with a magnifying glass’. Hunter noted that it was ‘extremely vascular, and dotted with innumerable whitish spots too small to be seen by the naked eye’. He concluded that the ‘presence of a corpus luteum [essential to establishing and maintaining pregnancy by producing high levels of progesterone], the enlargement of the uterus, the newly-formed vascular membrane…and the history of the case’ sufficiently proved that conception had taken place. [5]

Mary was, indeed, in the very early stages of pregnancy when she committed suicide.

Today, the only thing that remains of Mary Hunt and her unborn child is her disembodied uterus, which is on display at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Those who visit the collection know nothing of who she was in life, nor why she died at such a young age. They do not even know her name, for only the the word ‘Homo’ [indicating that the specimen is human] and the numbers ‘3590’ are stamped upon the  jar.

1. Story based off details found in Thomas Ogle, ‘The Case of a Young Woman who Poisoned Herself in the First Month of Her Pregnancy’ in John Hunter, Observations on Certain Parts of the Animal Oeconomy (1840), pp. 89 – 92.
2. Montesquieu, ‘Book XIV: Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate’ in The Spirit of the Laws (1752).
3. Beat Louis de Muralt, Letters Describing the Characterand Customsof the Eng- lish and French Nations … (I726), p. 44. Originally quoted in Roland Bartel, ‘Suicide in Eighteenth-Century England: The Myth of a Reputation’, Huntington Library Quarterly 23 (Feb., 1960), p. 145.
4. Ogle, ‘The Case of a Young Woman’, p. 90
5. Ibid., pp. 90-1.

Posted in Casebooks

It is an image that many recognise but most know nothing about. The plague mask—with its elongated beak and dark, soulless eyes—has been replicated in costume shops around the world [see left]. Indeed, so prevalent are these masks at parties and balls, one might be tempted to think it is a design entirely imagined by Italian mask-makers for the Venetian Carnival. But where did this mask originate and what purpose did it serve during plague outbreaks?

Although the plague ravaged Europe in the 14^th century, killing nearly two-thirds of its population, the earliest textual description of the mask dates from the 17^th century. Charles de Lorme, chief physician to Louis XIII and likely inventor behind the design, wrote:

The nose [is] half a foot long, shaped like a beak, filled with perfume with only two holes, one on each side near the nostrils, but that can suffice to breathe and carry along with the air one breathes the impression of the [herbs] enclosed further along in the beak. Under the coat we wear boots made in Moroccan leather (goat leather) from the front of the breeches in smooth skin that are attached to said boots, and a short sleeved blouse in smooth skin, the bottom of which is tucked into the breeches. The hat and gloves are also made of the same skin…with spectacles over the eyes. [1]

From this description, it is tempting to conclude that de Lorme was trying to protect himself against germs by wearing something akin to a modern-day biohazard suit. However, a coherent germ theory did not emerge until the mid-19^th century with the experiments of Joseph Lister, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. That said, de Lorme was trying to protect himself against something he believed was just as insidious and just as dangerous as we understand germs to be today: miasma, or poisonous vapours associated with decomposition and foul air.

De Lorme imagined that the herbs stuffed in the end of the beak would purify the air and prevent the plague doctor from breathing in the miasma, while the leather overcoat, breeches, boots and gloves would ensure that the skin was not exposed at any time.  The hat [see right] was that which was typically worn by physicians during the early modern period and thus served a purely symbolic purpose. The wooden cane, on the other hand, was likely used to keep patients at a distance, or else direct caregivers on how to move the bodies of infected victims during examinations. It was not used, as some suppose, to beat away the rats who are today widely believed to have carried fleas infected with yersinia pestis, the bacterium better known as plague.

It is difficult to know how ubiquitous the plague mask was in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Most physicians fled the city during outbreaks, leaving the dying to fend for themselves. Those who did remain behind rarely mention it in their writing, making the mask all the more elusive to historians.

Today, the plague mask lives on in the imaginations of artists, writers and film-makers [click here for a stunning example]. Through them, it has been transformed into something altogether different, for the plague mask which was once used to ward off death, has now become the very symbol of it.

1. Quoted and translated in Michel Tibayrenc (ed.), Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases: Modern Methodologies (2007) p. 680. From M. Lucenet, ‘La peste, fleau majeur’ extraits de la Bibliotheque InterUniversitaire, Paris (1994).

Posted in Casebooks

It is half past two in the morning on October 10th, 1777. The new moon casts a bluish light over St George’s burial ground off Hanover Square in London. Two men, clad in dark clothes, enter the cemetery. They have been tipped off by the grave-digger who accompanies them that the body of Mrs. Jane Sainsbury was buried earlier that day.

Carefully, they navigate around the tombstones until they come to the freshly dug grave. With spades and shovels, they begin soundlessly removing the dark, damp earth, digging deeper and deeper into the ground. Within fifteen minutes, they hit a hard, solid structure: the coffin. One man readies a cloth sack while the other two pry the lid open. A terrible odour escapes: the smell of death. The woman’s eyes have sunk deep into her skull. Her jaw hangs open, stretching her lips into a ghoulish grin.

All three struggle to remove the rotting corpse from its wooden enclosure and strip it of its clothes and burial shroud. Slowly, the woman’s fleshy remains are stuffed inside the sack, limb by limb. One snatcher tosses the woman’s possessions carelessly into the coffin while another silently shuts the lid. All three begin to shovel dirt back over the gravesite, hoisting the sack up as the hole slowly fills.

The job is finished in less than thirty minutes. [1]

The word ‘body-snatcher’ conjures up all kinds of sordid images: crude men with fingernails caked in dirt; corpses crammed into sacks, bodily fluids leaking through the cloth; murder. But the truth is that relatively little is known about the men who stole away in the middle of the night to collect bodies for the anatomists and their students in the 18th and 19th centuries. Yet, they are an important and integral part of the history of medicine.

During the 17th century, medical students in London were not required to study anatomy or physiology through clinical dissection. The act of cutting open dead bodies was generally believed to be ‘noe more able to direct a physician how to cure a disease than how to make a man’. [2] This is not to say, however, that medical students knew nothing of anatomy. Many attended public dissections conducted by the Barber Surgeons Company. There, they observed and watched, but did not participate.

This changed in the 18th century with the proliferation of private medical schools that gave students an opportunity to learn anatomy through dissection. To do this, however, bodies were needed. Lots of bodies.

From what little records exist, we know that body-snatchers required some level of moonlight in order to conduct their work in cemeteries, although not all bodies were obtained through exhumation. The clothes and burial shroud were sometimes removed, for stealing a body on its own was not considered theft since it had no value as property.

The body-snatchers might steal as many as six bodies in a single night and often worked in small gangs which fought each other for ‘a monopoly over the cadaver trade’. [3] This might involve desecrating a graveyard that supplied bodies to a rival gang in order to arouse fury from the local population who would then secure the cemetery, making it difficult for future attempts.

Cemeteries underwent dramatic makeovers as the public’s fear over body-snatching escalated. Mortsafes (right)—or iron grills—were placed over gravesites to prevent snatchers from disturbing the dead. Loose stones were put on top of surrounding walls, making it nearly impossible to scale. Churchyards became fortified with spring guns and primitive land mines. Cemetery ‘clubs’ were formed in which members would watch new graves until ‘decomposition rendered the cadavers useless for anatomical instruction’. [4]

In one instance, a father—grieving over the recent loss of his child—enclosed a ‘small box, [with] some deathful apparatus, communicating by means of wires, with the four corners, to be fastened to the top of the coffin’. As the child was lowered into the ground, he threw gunpowder into the box so that ‘the hidden machinery [was] put into a state of readiness for execution’. [5]

At the same time, people’s fears over being buried alive reached an all-time high. If the following account from 1824 is to be believed, the resurrection men sometimes acted in the role of saviours to those who might otherwise have suffered this terrible fate:

I had been some time ill of a low and lingering fever. My strength gradually wasted and I could see by the doctor that I had nothing to hope. One day, towards evening, I was seized with strange and indescribable quivering…I heard the sound of weeping at my pillow, and the voice of the nurse say, ‘He is dead.’

The man goes on to describe how he was unable to stir himself, even as he realised he was being buried alive.

I felt the coffin lifted and borne away. I heard and felt it placed in the hearse; it halted, and the coffin was taken out. I felt myself carried on the shoulders of men; I heard the cords of the coffin moved. I felt it swing as dependent by them. It was lowered and rested upon the bottom of the grave. Dreadful was the effort I then made to exert the power of action, but my whole frame was immovable. The sound of the rattling mould as it covered me, was far more tremendous than thunder. This also ceased, and all was silent.

Some time passed before he heard a noise. Mistakenly believing that his friends had returned, he soon realised that it was the body-snatchers who had come to steal his body.

They dragged me out of the coffin by the head, and carried me swiftly away. When borne to some distance, I was thrown down like a clod…Being rudely stripped of my shroud, I was placed naked on a table. In a short time I heard by the bustle in the room that the doctors and students were assembling. When all was ready the Demonstrator took his knife, and pierced my bosom. I felt a dreadful crackling, as it were, throughout my whole frame; a convulsive shudder instantly followed, and a shriek of horror rose from all present.

Despite the fact that the snatchers had allegedly saved this man from certain death, his tone when describing them is still laced with disapproval. They are ‘robbers’ who ‘plunder’ the graves of decent people’s loved ones, of ‘parents, and children, and friends.’ They treat the corpse ‘rudely’ when handling it. There is something inhuman about their behaviour. [6]

In newspaper reports from the 19th century, the snatchers are characterised as ruthless thieves with murderous tendencies. Although William Burke and William Hare were never body-snatchers, the fact that they murdered 16 people between 1827 and 1828 for the sole purpose of selling their bodies to the anatomists served to sully further the reputation of the resurrection men. Hysteria over ‘burking’ broke out amongst the general population. In cases where people went missing, body-snatchers were almost always suspected.

The body-snatchers continue to live in the public’s imagination as criminals of the lowest form, partly because so little is known about them. As evidenced above, reports about their alleged activities are often exaggerated in newspapers and literature from the period. In 1824, the surgeon, William Mackenzie, complained that a week rarely passed without ‘the circulation of exaggerated stories of atrocities in the procuring of subjects for dissection’. [7]

Even more frustratingly, historians find it difficult to track body-snatchers as they often use numerous aliases to hide their true identities. One snatcher may appear in multiple court records under half a dozen names. There is simply no way to know.

It is unlikely that many body-snatchers were also murderers. The punishment for stealing a body was too low; the punishment for murder was too high. The payout for a body was the same no matter how one procured it. Yet undeniably, the resurrection men are a part of the medical profession’s dark and sordid past—a past that for the most part has received only cursory acknowledgement.

Still, we must ask ourselves where we would be today without the body-snatchers and the bodies which they stole.

1. Based loosely off a true account. The three body-snatchers were eventually apprehended. One was acquitted while the other two were sentenced to six months imprisonment. They were paraded through the streets and whipped publicly. L. Benson, The Book of Remarkable Trials and Notorious Characters (1872?).
2. Probably the fragment of 1668, Anatomie, most of which is in John Locke’s hand. Originally quoted in Andrew Cunningham, ‘The Kinds of Anatomy’, Medical History (1975), p. 3.
3. Ian Ross and Carol Urquhart Ross, ‘Body Snatching in Nineteenth Century Britain: from Exhumation to Murder’, British Journal of Law and Society (Summer, 1979), p. 113.
4. Ibid, p. 114.
5.J.B. Bailey, The Diary of a Resurrectionist: 1811-1812 (1896), p. 80.
6. Ibid., pp. 65-68.
7. MacKenzie, ‘An Appeal to the Public and to the Legislature, on the Necessity of Affording Dead Bodies to the Schools of Anatomy, by Legislature Enactment’, Westminster Review (1824), pp. 83-86. Originally quoted in Ross and Ross, ‘Body Snatching in Nineteenth Century Britain’, p. 113.

Posted in Casebooks