The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc.
History
The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc.
Literature and medicine; Physicians; Physicians in literature
A few years ago, I was one day exchanging reminiscences of a long bygone
generation with a brother journalist, when, on this gruesome subject being
mentioned, he placed in my hands a report of the trial of the murderers of
Carlo Ferrari, which appeared to have been detached from a volume of
criminal trials. No feature of the horrible record impressed me so much as
the cool, business-like manner in which the wretches concerned in the
crime hawked the corpse of their victim from one school of anatomy to
another, and the equally cool and business-like manner in which the matter
was dealt with by those with whom their nefarious occupation brought them
in contact. The procuring of corpses for anatomical purposes was, in fact,
a regular trade, and the biographer of Sir Astley Cooper states that "the
Resurrection-men were occasionally employed on expeditions into the
country to obtain possession of the bodies of those who had been subjected
to some important operation, and of which a _post mortem_ examination was
of the greatest interest to science. Scarcely any distance from London was
considered an insuperable difficulty in the attaining of this object, and
as certainly as the Resurrectionist undertook the task, so certain was he
of completing it. This was usually an expensive undertaking, but still it
did not restrain the most zealous in their profession from occasionally
engaging these men in this employment." The price of a subject ranged from
seven to twelve guineas, but when the "body-snatchers" were specially
employed to procure some particular corpse, the incidental expenses were
often as much more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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