470 Supply of " Subjects" for Dissection [MAY, 



we reflect, that the most uninformed town tradesman, or country squire, 

 arrived at estate by the death of some distant relative, and embarked in 

 chancery suits upon trials and titles twenty interests deep, helpless and 

 hopeless as all his perceptions assure him he is, is not more entirely in 

 the hands of his attorney, than a well informed gentleman, with three 

 ribs broken, or a collar bone put out, by the overturning of his carriage, 

 is at the mercy of his country surgeon or physician : when we recollect 

 all this, surely it does seem indubitable under such circumstances, that, 

 being compelled, without redress or alternative, to trust a particular 

 class of men upon such vital points, common sense should lead us to 

 assist those men (rather than oppose them) in the acquisition of every 

 knowledge which can qualify or aid them to execute those trials skil- 

 fully and duly ! 



Unfortunately, the existing feeling upon the question before us > 

 maintained by a sort of pleasing reliance which we are apt to have 

 upon the infallibility of our own arrangements, without reference to 

 the utter impossibility of executing them goes directly to the con- 

 trary effect. It is our pleasure to insist upon men's possessing know- 

 ledge, without ever having had the means of acquiring it : and we 

 accept, with all the good humour in the world, the assurance as, in 

 truth, in common justice we ought to do, for it is all that can be 

 offered to us that our demand has been complied with : not con- 

 sidering that we have no means of ascertaining that that assurance is 

 true ; and totally regardless of the consequences which hang over 

 us, in case, by any accident, it should turn out that it is not. 

 The whole arrangement of the supply of subjects to the schools of 

 anatomy, as it at present exists, is full of danger (as it is of disgust and 

 offence) to the community. The trade of procuring bodies for this 

 service is one of considerable hazard. From the punishment which 

 attaches to it in case of detection, and the necessity of certain connexions 

 and circumstances of local knowledge (not readily acquired) to pursue 

 it with success, the number of agents engaged in the calling is always 

 very small; and, by a curious illustration of the effect, in every market, of 

 a " demand" exceeding the " supply," the price of " subjects," for some 

 years past has reached a height which forms a most serious and dan- 

 gerous tax upon medical education. Owing to the competition among 

 the surgeons, while supplies have been scanty, and the combination of the 

 Resurrection Men, who hold the trade in their own hands, and have no 

 alarm as to the " law" being resorted to in any case against them, the price 

 of subjects, has increased, in the course of the last fifteen years, from four 

 or five, or at most six guineas each, to fifteen, eighteen, twenty ! And not 

 long since, even as much as five and twenty guineas was given and on 

 those terms they are still obtained with difficulty. Our object here is to 

 assert a principle rather than enter into details : but efforts have been made 

 several times, by the medical people to get rid of this extortion, without 

 success. On one occasion (a few years since) the experiment of bring- 

 ing a new party in was tried, supported by strong patronage, to oppose 

 the existing dealers. The experience and local knowledge, however, of 

 the latter were too strong to be overcome; and after a contest, in which 

 the fact of their pursuing an illegal traffic, exposed the surgeons to the 

 most serious and distressing annoyance the affair ended in the pro- 

 viding party obtaining rather better terms than they had before. 



Then one of the first effects likely to be consequent upon this needless 



