Chapter III: Part 3

To the other parts of the plan proposed above for supplying the anatomical schools in Great Britain, there appears to be no objections whatever. No one can object to such a disposal of the bodies of those who die in prisons; no one can reasonably object to such a disposal of the bodies of those who die in poor-houses. These persons are pensioners upon the public bounty: they owe the public a debt: they have been supported by the public during life; if, therefore, after death they can be made useful to the public, it is a prejudice, not a reason--it is an act of injustice, not the observance of a duty, which would prevent them from becoming so. It is true that many of these persons are honest and respectable; and have been reduced to indigence by misfortune: were they all so it would not alter the state of the argument. Some concession and co-operation on the part of the public, for this great public object, is indispensable, without which nothing can be done: but if any concession be made, it can be made with respect to this class of persons better than any other, because it can be made with less violation of public feeling. Nor is any indignity either intended or offered to these persons. They are appropriated to this service not because they are poor, but because they are friendless: because, that is, no persons survive them who take such an interest in their fate as to be rendered unhappy by this disposal of their remains. That they are without friends is no good reason why their memory should be treated with indignity; but it is a good reason, it is the best possible reason why they should be selected for this public service. Poverty, it is true, is a misfortune: poverty, it is true, has terror and pain enough in itself: no legislature ought by any act to increase its wretchedness; but the measure here proposed is pregnant with good to the poor, and would tend more than can be estimated to lessen the misery of their condition. For it would give knowledge to the lowest practitioners of the medical art; that is, to the persons who are at present lamentably deficient, and into whose hands the great bulk of the poor fall. And, after all, the true question is, whether the surgeon shall be allowed to gain knowledge by operating on the bodies of the dead, or driven to obtain it by practising on the bodies of the living. If the dead bodies of the poor are not appropriated to this use, their living bodies must be--and will be. The rich will always have it in their power to select, for the performance of an operation, the surgeon who has signalized himself by success: but that surgeon, if he have not obtained the dexterity which ensures success, by dissecting and operating on the dead, must have acquired it by making experiments on the living bodies of the poor. There is no other means by which he can possibly have gained the necessary information. Every such surgeon who has attained deserved eminence, must have risen to it through the suffering which he has inflicted, and the death which he has brought upon hundreds of the poor. What would be the immediate and constant effect of an abolition of the practice of dissecting the dead? It would be to convert poor-houses and public hospitals into so many schools where the surgeons, by practising on the living bodies of the poor, would learn to operate on those of the rich with safety and dexterity. Thus the poor would be tortured, and many of them would be put to death in order that the rich might be saved from pain and danger. This would be the certain and inevitable result--this would indeed be to treat this class of the people with real indignity and horrible injustice, and proves how possible it is to show an apparent consideration for the poor, and yet practically to abuse them in the most cruel manner.

The plan now proposed for remedying the evils which have been stated would accomplish the object easily and completely: it would inflict no injury on any private individual: it would do no violence to the public feeling: it would render the dread of anatomy, as far as that dread were really operative, directly beneficial to the community: it would terminate at once the evils of the present system: it would put an end to the education of daring and desperate violators of the law: it would tranquillize the public mind: the dead would rest undisturbed: the sepulchre would be sacred, and all the horrors which the imagination connects with its violation would cease for ever.

We submit these observations to the calm and serious consideration of our countrymen. We address them especially to the members of our legislature. Upon the attention of the latter we would particularly urge this further consideration, the importance of which they well know how to estimate. In consequence of the difficulty of procuring subjects in England, every medical student in Great Britain who can possibly afford the time now goes to Paris to perfect himself in anatomy. Accordingly the number of English students in Paris is already immense: that number increases rapidly every year: it increases by the desertion of the schools in Edinburgh and London. The consequence is obvious, and will be surely and deeply felt in a few years. Anatomy will be neglected in England, and for this indispensable branch of knowledge England will become entirely dependent on France. There cannot be a doubt that there is good sense enough among the people of England to submit to whatever regulations may be necessary to prevent evils so serious and so fatal, provided such regulations are framed in a proper spirit, and observed with a due regard to decorum, and it is certain that those persons who co-operate to establish these regulations will ultimately receive, as they will deserve, the gratitude of their country.

FINIS.

T. C. Hansard, Pater-noster-row Press.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] A winter never passes without proving fatal to several students who die from injuries received in dissection.