Supply of " Subjects" for Dissection [MAY, 



the giving up of the bodies of those criminals " who died in prison 

 under sentence." All these sources of supply, if their power were 

 multiplied ten times over, would be greatly insufficient. The amount 

 of criminals dying in prison, under sentence, is so small, as to be 

 scarcely worth naming. Verdicts of " suicide/' as the penalties of the 

 law stand already, are not returned in one case of self-destruction out 

 of fifty. And, under the practice supposed, they would never be returned 

 at all. And the total amount of executions in England and Wales 

 supposing the bodies of all executed criminals to be given* does not 

 average eighty in the course of the year, while the annual consumption 

 of subjects in the schools of anatomy of London alone, would be ill 

 provided for with an annual supply of 2^000. Lord Calthorpe's project 

 (if we recollect right) of authorizing surgeons to contract with parties 

 for their bodies after death, would be equally unavailable in practice. 

 It would lead to constant squabbles with relations and personal repre- 

 sentatives : and the claim would be of a nature which it would be too 

 painful to call in the assistance even of the more immediate authorities 

 to enforce. 



Setting aside these suggestions, therefore, which we think evidently 

 unsuited to the purpose in view, there is a course, and one proposed by 

 the medical professors themselves, by which, at no expense to the feelings 

 of individuals in the moral interests of society, all that is desired may 

 be accomplished : and of the necessity of some alteration of the existing 

 system, we believe it impossible for persons who will only consent to 

 think upon the question long to entertain a doubt. Of the value of the 

 science of medicine to the human race perhaps especially of that 

 branch of it which constitutes the department of surgery there can 

 scarcely be supposed a question. There may be and, while in the 

 full possession of health and strength, we should be inclined to 

 say there are some operations of excessive and desperate nicety, by 



* The clear policy, one would think, and certainly that which must eventually prevail, 

 would be to leave off sentencing offenders to dissection, as a punishment, altogether. Their 

 total number were all given up is too small to furnish any material portion of the required 

 supply : and there is this objection to adding to it there is something cruel and unjust in 

 the thought, under any circumstances, of adjudging the body of an innocent man to the 

 same treatment, no matter what that maybe, to which we especially devote that of a villain 

 whose Crimes have merited the extremest sentence of the law. The opinion of Lord Ten- 

 terden, " that dissection should be confined to murderers, because the fear of such a visita- 

 tion is likely to deter men from committing murder,*' strikes us certainly as very odd ! No 

 race of people have a more superstitious horror of dissection than the lower Irish ; but 

 that feeling does not prevent the murders in Ireland } as compared with those of England, 

 from being in the proportion of fifteen or twenty to one. In England, the only reflection, 

 we should say, that could occur to any murderer in posse (that ever read a newspaper) 

 upon the subject of dissection, would be that if he was detected, he would undergo a parti- 

 cular course of treatment in expiation of his offence, which hundreds of his countrymen 

 already underwent annually, without having committed any offence at all. The people 

 of this country, no doubt, dislike being dissected : but if dissection (after death) were the 

 only punishment inflicted by the law for crime, it would require six more chief justices 

 in addition to Lord Tenterden, within seven years, to get through the calendars at the Old 

 Bailey. About the suicide proposition, too, there is a cruelty, which certainly those who 

 advocate it must fail to have observed. The liability here must stand distinctly as a 

 penalty as a punishment imposed for .a particular description of offence, by the law. 

 And upon whom is it that this sentence is to be inflicted ? Not upon the senseless body, 

 for that can feel or suffer nothing, but upon a surviving family, already bowed to the 

 ground by the very heaviest species of domestic affliction ! We trust, for the honour of 

 humanity, that, if such a law were passed, we should never have a verdict of " Suicide'* 

 found again. 



