476 6 'upply of <f Subjects ' for Dissection. [MAY, 



pause for reflection probably would render his aid of no avail. 

 Whether he operates unskilfully, or forbears to operate at all (at the 

 certain loss of his character 'and future livelihood) from a sense of 

 incompetency, the result to the sufferer is equally fatal. We call upon 

 any man who witnessed the nature of the duties entrusted to the 

 youngest surgeons to mere hospital assistants during the last war, 

 to say whether an act of greater public atrocity (or insanity) can be 

 conceived, than any attempt to limit the means of acquiring knowledge 

 to the students in physic or anatomy ? 



That a question should ever have arisen as to the fitness of supplying 

 persons who are to be so deeply entrusted with the best sources of 

 information, will probably be counted by future generations as one of 

 the strange spots of darkness amid a horizon of light, surprising in 

 the present times ; but that the same question should continue to exist 

 for three years if those who are pleased to entertain it were fooled 

 to the top of their bent, we have no hesitation in pronouncing impos- 

 sible. The only toleration of the prohibitory law as to enquiry for an 

 hour, rests upon the fact that that law is openly and grossly violated. 

 If the means of anatomical study (however now cramped) were only 

 really restricted for twelve months, as the law declares they shall be, 

 the whole country would be seen coming forward, from the peer to the 

 peasant, with one voice, and insisting upon the grant of facilities 

 no matter at whose expense a hundred times greater than those which 

 are now demanded. In conclusion, we may just take leave to observe, 

 that it is difficult to understand any great outcry as to the practice of 

 dissection of the dead subject, when the incomparably more dreadful 

 resort (although exercised on the brute creation) is silently acquiesced 

 in of the dissection of the living. We take 110 objection to the bad ; 

 we cannot afford to do it : we must trust to the consciences of professors 

 for adopting it only for purposes of unquestionable utility. But we 

 should have little respect for the feelings of that man, who would not ' 

 freely give up his own body or even that of his relative to the anato- 

 mist, after death, if by that course the experiment upon one single dog 

 (alive) could be prevented. 



