[ 46(1 ] [MAY, 



SUPPLY OF " SUBJECTS'*' FOR DISSECTION TO THE STUDENTS 

 OF ANATOMY. 



THIS is a controversy into the very discussion of which we enter with 

 some unwillingness ; but the vital interest which all classes of the com- 

 munity have in its determination must overcome all fanciful or cere- 

 monious scruples. We are not friendly to the principle of doing every 

 thing, wilfully, by " legislative enactment," and could have wished that, 

 even at the expense of some hard winking on the part of the law, 

 legislation on the subject might have been avoided. As some con- 

 clusive arrangement, however, seems to be imperatively demanded; 

 in the few observations which we have to offer, we guard ourselves 

 against every imputation of being disposed to trifle with or hold 

 lightly, even the harmless prejudices, far less the honourable niceties 

 and decencies of human life. Our object (whatever may be our 

 success,) is simply to prove the expediency of placing upon some 

 received and regulated footing, a practice which already has existence, 

 certainly without recognition, but at the same time subject to no restric- 

 tion or regulation at all. 



It is hardly necessary that we should enter here into any account of 

 the practice of former ages as connected with the study of anatomy. 

 Very little seems to be known with even tolerable certainty upon the 

 subject. The ancients, as far as our information goes, had not the 

 advantage of any dissection of the human body ; and Galen, it appears, 

 dissected asses, as approaching the nearest, in some circumstances of 

 conformation, to it. In the earlier times of English history, from the 

 habits and superstitions of the age, there can be little doubt that, if any 

 inquiries into human anatomy were made, they would be conducted 

 with the strictest attention to secrecy : probably, however, none such 

 occurred, for the state of medical science, in Europe at least, at that 

 period was at a very low ebb. As the practice of ancient times, 

 upon this question, as upon many others, seems to us to be of very 

 questionable authority, for that which should be done at the present 

 day, so neither does it strike us as highly important that we should 

 inquire far into the view which modern foreign nations entertain upon 

 the same subject. The whole question at issue is a question of feeling, 

 which neither is, nor ought to be, decided in any country, by the quo- 

 tation of examples from another. There are circumstances enough of 

 taste and domestic arrangement existing in France and Germany, to 

 which it is difficult to object in the abstract, and yet which we should 

 be disposed to suffer some inconvenience rather than imitate in England. 

 Upon this point of the question, therefore, we shall confine ourselves 

 simply to the statement of one well-known fact that, in France, the 

 supply of the anatomical schools with bodies for dissection, is treated 

 by the whole nation as a circumstance of the first importance, and, 

 formally, provided for by law. 



It is not, however, upon the declared opinion of any foreign state, 

 however high its rank and authority in knowledge and civilization, 

 that we found ourselves in supporting the appeal of the medical pro-* 

 fession to the government of this country. Our reliance is upon our 

 ability to shew that the common good demands and must receive a 

 partial waver of those feelings, or prejudices, to which time has accus- 

 tomed us ; and, still farther, that those violations of conventional opinion 



