1028,] to Ike Students of Anatomy. 475 



inconvenient, and needlessly offensive to feeling, it is too expensive, and 

 too scanty, for the important purposes of medical information. Now 

 those persons who are disposed to look at the plan proposed as levelled 

 unfairly at the interests or feelings of the lower orders, will do well to 

 recollect that the consequences of any want of medical information are 

 sure to fall, and to fall almost exclusively, upon the poor. We cannot 

 alter the natural, and immutable course, in civilized society, of human 

 affairs. There will always be under any conceivable extent of restric- 

 tion a given quantity of medical skill aftd information, acquired by 

 expensive study, the result of actual practice ; but that skill and infor- 

 mation will not nor cannot, where its amount is limited fall to the 

 lot of the lower orders. The best medical aid will be devoted as the 

 best of every talent and every commodity is to the use of those who 

 can afford to pay the highest price for it ; and the care of the poorer 

 classes must fall to those who have then practical skill and experience 

 still to acquire, and whom, until they have acquired it (no matter in 

 what manner or at what expense), the higher orders will refuse to em- 

 ploy. The policy then, surely, in this case, more than in any other, from 

 the importance of the interest at stake, favourable to the poorer people, 

 is to make the talent or commodity which they want, as cheap and as 

 attainable as possible. Of every thing no matter what it is which 

 is scarce, the share of the lower orders must always be smalL If linen 

 shirts could only be produced at five guineas a-piece, labouring artizans 

 would be compelled to go without them : and, if the means of acquiring 

 high medical skill be rendered expensive or difficult of attainment, 

 those persons in society who are to choose last, will have the benefit of 

 that skill only in a mean and inferior degree. 



With such persons if any such exist as think a result like this, 

 preferable to the prosecution of anatomical study at the expense of the 

 dead subject, or imagine that by any other course than actual operation 

 upon the human frame, alive or dead, anatomical skill can be obtained 

 with such persons it would be waste of time to enter into discussion. 

 The conundrum of reliance upon such knowledge as can be obtained by 

 drawings or mechanical preparations, is absurd. Such devices can 

 afford but a scanty and insufficient information, even where abundant 

 time may be allowed for deliberation, and where we can repair an 

 error, if one has been committed. The duty of the surgeon gives him 

 the benefit of none of these easements or advantages. He has an act to 

 perform, which he must execute and execute, skilfully on the instant, 

 or ruin his own reputation, and destroy the patient who entrusts him. 

 He is called upon at a time when the delay of a moment the mere 



ascertained, before any dissection took place, to be in the hands of a particular thief, 

 \vho had stolen it. The sum demanded in this instance happened to be small ; if we 

 recollect right, not more than seven or eight pounds ; but it is evident that such a sys- 

 tem, once established, might be made the vehicle of extortion in the most outrageous 

 degree. There are many cases in which, under such circumstances, persons would 

 pay five hundred pounds without hesitation. If this practice were to be attempted fre- 

 quently and there can be little doubt that, where money is to be got by it, it will some 

 day or other be attempted the necessary result would be such a course of penalties on 

 the part of the legislature, as would amount to a prohibition upon the stealing of subjects 

 pretty nearly altogether. We give this case upon the authority of a newspaper ; but 

 there is no reason that we are aware of, for doubting its veracity ; and one fact is cer- 

 tain the thing is capable of being done. It is as easy to get up a scheme of compo- 

 sition for the recovery of a dead body, as of a banker's parcel. 



3 P2 



