Without bodies for dissection medical education was impossible, and at that time there was only one legal means by which they could be obtained: those of executed criminals were made over to the medical profession for the purpose of dissection. But this source was, happily, even then a scanty one. Until, therefore, some other provision was made, the employment of "resurrection-men," though against the law, and in itself revolting to the professors of anatomy, was a necessity. The difficulty was an increasing one. The wretched men whose trade it was to supply the medical schools were punished with imprisonment and heavy fines, and were, not unnaturally, regarded with abhorrence by the mob--such abhorrence that it was often difficult to protect them from its fury when arrested. In Scotland, especially, this popular feeling was so strong that disgraceful outrages were committed against those even _suspected_ of being concerned in exhumation; the churchyards were watched, and the obstacles in obtaining subjects for the schools had become so many that the students were fast deserting them. Indeed throughout Great Britain it appeared as if there would soon be a general desertion of all the native schools, and that students would go to Paris for the education they could not get at home. In the article by Dr Southwood Smith which first called public attention to these evils, he points out, in a very striking manner, the paramount necessity of a supply of subjects. He reminds his readers of the wild theories of former times when anatomical knowledge was not possessed, and enforces on their attention the fact that this knowledge can only be acquired, with any degree of perfection, by means of dissection. He further reminds them that no operation can be performed without torture to the living, and danger to life itself, by the hand of a surgeon unpractised in dissection; and no clear judgment formed by the physician on the diseases of the human frame--diseases generally seated in organs hidden from the eye--without a study of the internal structure. After shortly passing over the evils of the system then prevailing, which have just been pointed out--evils which were then very generally known--he suggests the remedy,--a very simple one. It was, to cease to give the bodies of executed criminals for anatomical purposes, and thus in a measure to take off the stigma on dissection; and then to appropriate to that purpose the bodies of all those who die in hospitals and workhouses _unclaimed by relatives_. Nothing was done for some time, till in 1828, three years after this paper was written, there came the horrible discovery that the difficulty of obtaining subjects from the churchyards had become so great that two men, Burke and Hare, had resorted to murder to supply the need--the temptation having been the large price to be obtained for bodies.