Many of the anecdotes of the surgeon’s life in old Edinburgh turn on this question of anatomy. Until the Anatomy Act of 1832, that science was terribly hampered by the want of subjects. The charter of 1505 provided an allowance of one body annually, which was almost ludicrously insufficient, hence body snatching became almost a necessity, perhaps among the surgeons themselves it was counted a virtue, but they dared not say it openly. On 20th May 1711, the college solemnly protested against body snatching. On the 24th of January 1721 a clause was ordered to be inserted in indentures binding apprentices not to violate graves, but the populace, rightly or wrongly, thought those rascal surgeons had tongue in cheek all the time, and were ever inclined to put the worst possible construction on every circumstance that seemed to point that way. Lauder of Fountainhall commemorates an early case. On the 6th February 1678 four gipsies, a father and three sons, were hanged together at Edinburgh, for killing another gipsy called Faa at Romanno. To the Edinburgh burghers of the day the gipsy and the cateran were mere wild beasts of prey, and these four wretches were hung in haste, cut down in haste, and forthwith huddled together with their clothes on—it was not worth while to strip them of their rags—into a shallow hole in Greyfriars Churchyard. Next morning the grave lay open, and the body of the youngest son, aged sixteen, was missing. It was remembered he had been the last thrown over, and the first cut down, and the last buried. Perhaps he had revived, thrown aside a scanty covering of earth, and fled to Highland hill or Border waste. Others opined that the body had been stolen by some chirurgeon or his servant for the purpose of dissection, on which possibility Fountainhall takes occasion to utter some grave legal maxims; solemnly locks the door, as it were, in the absence of the steed. In 1742 a rifled grave was noted in the West Kirkyard, and a body, presumably its former tenant, was presently discovered near the shop of one Martin Eccles, surgeon. Forthwith the Portsburgh drum was beating a mad tattoo through the Cowgate, and the mob proceeded to smash the surgeon’s shop. As for Martin, you may safely assume _non est inventus_, else had he been smashed likewise. Again, a sedan chair is discovered containing a dead body, apparently on its way to the dissecting room. The chairman and his assistant were banished, and the chair was burned by the common hangman. Again, one John Samuel, a gardener, moved thereto, you guess, by an all too consuming thirst, is taken at the Potterow Port trying to sell the dead body of a child, which was recognised as having been buried at Pentland the week before. He was soundly whipped through Edinburgh and banished Scotland for seven years.