required. Such medical practitioners must give security for the decent interment of the bodies after they have served their purposes; and then a written authority to open a dissecting room is given by the Inspector of Anatomy of the city, town, or place. The Inspector’s duty is to keep a register of bodies given up for dissection; a register of the qualified practitioners desiring bodies; to make an impartial distribution of the bodies in rotation; to visit the dissection rooms, and to report to the police magistrate or chief municipal officer, any improper conduct on the part of students or teachers [428]. A person may be found guilty of the offence of disinterring a corpse, even though he was not actually present at the body-lifting, if with the intention of giving aid and assistance he was near enough to afford it, if required [429]. Besides the danger he runs of being brought before a criminal tribunal, the body-lifter incurs the risk of civil proceedings being taken against him. It is true, as Blackstone says, the heir has no property in the body or ashes of |157| his ancestors; nor can he bring any civil action against such as indecently, at least, if not impiously, violate and disturb their remains when dead and buried; but that learned commentator goes on to remark: “The person, indeed, who has the freehold of the soil, may bring an action of trespass against such as dig and disturb it” [430]. This has been clearly established in a case in Massachusetts, where a father sued for the removal of the remains of his child, and recovered a verdict for $837 in an action of trespass _quare clausum fregit_. Mr. Justice Forster, in giving judgment, remarks that a dead body is not the subject of property, and after burial it becomes part of the ground to which it has been committed, earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. The only action that can be brought is trespass _quare clausum_. Any one, said the Judge, in actual possession of the land may maintain this against a wrong-doer. The gist of the action is the breaking and entering, but the circumstances which accompany and give character to the trespass may always be shown either in aggravation or mitigation. Acts of gross carelessness as well as those of wilful mischief often inflict a serious wound to the feelings, when the injury done to property is comparatively trifling, and we know of no rule of law which requires the mental suffering of the party complaining, caused by the misconduct of the wrong-doer, to be disregarded [431].