impress on the government the necessity for an alteration in the law, and among the members we find the names of John Abernethy, Charles Bell, Everard Home, Benjamin Brodie, Astley Cooper and Henry Cline. It was owing to the exertions of this body that in 1828 a select committee was appointed by the government to report on the whole question, and to the minutes of evidence taken before this body the reader is referred for further details.
The report of this committee led to the Anatomy Act of 1832, but there can be little doubt that its passage through the House was expedited by the recent discovery and arrest of the infamous William Burke and William Hare, who, owing to the extreme difficulty of procuring subjects for dissection in Edinburgh and the high price paid for them, had made a practice of enticing men to their lodgings and then drugging and suffocating them in order to sell their bodies to Dr Knox. Hare turned king’s evidence but Burke was executed. (See MacGregor’s History of Burke and Hare, 1884, Lonsdale’s Life and Writings of Robert Knox, 1870. Many further details connected with the condition of anatomy, especially in Dublin, before the passing of the Anatomy Act, will be found in Memoirs of James Macartney by Professor A. Macalister, F.R.S.) The bill to legalize and regulate the supply of subjects for dissection did not pass without considerable opposition. In 1829 the College of Surgeons petitioned against it, and it was withdrawn in the House of Lords owing to the opposition of the archbishop of Canterbury, but in 1832 a new Anatomy Bill was introduced, which, though violently opposed by Messrs Hunt, Sadler and Vyvyan, was supported by Macaulay and O’Connell, and finally passed the House of Lords on the 19th of July 1832.
This is the act which governs the practice of anatomy in the British Isles up to the present day, and which has only been slightly modified as to the time during which bodies may be kept unburied in the schools. It provides that any one intending to practise anatomy must obtain a licence from the home secretary. As a matter of fact only one or two teachers in each institution take out this licence and are known as licensed teachers, but they accept the whole responsibility for the proper treatment of all bodies dissected in the building for which their licence is granted. Watching over these licensed teachers, and receiving constant reports from them, are four inspectors of anatomy, one each for England, Scotland, Ireland and London, who report to the home secretary and know the whereabouts of every body which is being dissected. The main clause of the act is the seventh, which says that a person having lawful possession of a body may permit it to undergo anatomical examination provided no relative objects; the other clauses are subsidiary and detail the methods of carrying this into effect. In clause 16, however, the old act of Henry VIII. is repealed and the bodies of murderers are no longer to be given up for dissection after execution.
There can be little doubt that this act has worked well and with a minimum of friction; it at once did away with body-snatching and crimes like those of Burke and Hare. No licensed teacher now could or would receive a body without a medical certificate and a warrant from the inspector of anatomy, and, when the bodies are buried, a proper religious service, according to the creed professed during life, is provided. The great majority of bodies are those of unclaimed poor in the workhouse infirmaries, but a few are obtained each year from the general hospitals. Occasionally a well-to-do person, following the example of Jeremy Bentham, leaves his body for the advancement of science, but even then, if his relatives object, it is not received.
The ample supply of subjects obtained by legitimate means which the anatomy act provided was followed by the opening of anatomical schools at all the great London hospitals and the universities, with the result that anatomical research was stimulated and text-books embodying the latest discoveries were brought out. It is wonderful, however, how much descriptive anatomy was taught in the days before text-books were common and how much of what is essential to the study of surgery and medicine the students knew. In looking through an old book of anatomical questions and answers dated 1812, one is struck by the fact that any one working through them with the body would probably pass an average modern anatomical examination to-day.
The various phases which anatomy in the British Isles has passed through have also been experienced in America, though it is difficult to compare the two countries owing to the fact that each state in the Union makes its own laws as to dissection, and that these vary considerably. The first anatomy act worthy of the name was that of Massachusetts, and was passed in 1831, one year before the British act. There is reason to believe, however, that, in some states, all the evils of body-snatching existed up to the end of the 19th century. In some more enlightened states, such as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the modern acts are, in advance of the British in that they are mandatory instead of permissive, and their compulsory nature is found rather to reduce than to increase public opposition to dissection. A study of the history of anatomy in the United States during the 19th century furnishes an instructive lesson on the futility of attempting to suppress dissection by legislation and on the serious and sometimes terrible crimes to which any such attempt naturally leads. It also teaches that, when unclaimed bodies must be given up and must be treated reverently and buried decently, there is less friction than when public boards have the right of arbitrarily refusing to allow their unclaimed dead to be used for the service of the living.
In all the important countries of Europe, with the exception, of Russia and Turkey, anatomy acts exist. They almost all differ from the British act in being mandatory instead of permissive; in other words, certain unclaimed bodies must be given up to the schools of anatomy. As a rule these come from the general hospitals, but sometimes, as in Germany, Austria and Sweden, suicides are received and form a considerable part of the whole number. Even where executed criminals are available they nowadays form a negligible contribution, but the unclaimed bodies of people dying in prison are provided for in the French, Belgian, Norwegian, Swedish, German and Italian regulations, and in Paris they form an important element of the supply. In Russia several attempts to gain an anatomy act have been made, but have always been opposed by those in authority, and there is good reason to believe that bodies are procured by bribing hospital and mortuary attendants. It is said that the army contributes a large percentage of the total number. In Turkey no facilities for dissecting the dead body exist, as the practice is against the Mahommedan religion; the German pathologists in Turkey, however, insist on making post mortem examinations. In the British colonies anatomical regulations vary a good deal; sometimes, as in New South Wales, the act is founded on that of Great Britain and is permissive, but in Victoria the minister may authorize the medical officer of any public institution supported wholly or in part by funds from the general revenue to permit unclaimed bodies to be dissected, provided the persons, during life had not expressed a wish against it. This act in its working is equivalent to a mandatory one, since the power of refusing bodies is not left in the hands of, in this respect, uneducated poor law guardians.
In the early years of the 19th century Sir Charles Bell’s work on human anatomy is by far the most important in the British Isles. He wrote the article on the nerves in his brother John Bell’s work on the anatomy of the human body, as well as his own classical works on the anatomy of expression, the hand and the arteries; but his chief work was the discovery of the difference between motor and sensory nerves. Sir Astley Cooper brought out his beautifully illustrated monograph on hernia in 1807. Besides these, the Edinburgh school had contributed the systematic treatises of Andrew Fyfe, John Bell, the third Monro and John Gordon. In 1828 appeared the first edition of Quain’s Anatomy, written by Jones Quain. This monumental work, which is still among the very first of English text-books, has run through ten editions, and is of even greater value to the teacher and researcher than to the medical student, because of its
