

1827.] ^Oti the Pleasures of Body -^taU' hi tig. 359 



purpose of looking at the body, I forced myself to advance to the table, 

 and, willing to give him a good opinion of my courage, uncovered the face. 

 I cannot help laughing at it now ; but, at that time / it was an awful 

 moment. I had forgotten that the man was an acquaintance of my own. 

 Even since the moment of resurrection, my mind had been absorbed by 

 the one simple abstract idea of an anatomical subject ; all thought of indi- 

 viduality was lost; I made no personal reflections. But here was the 

 strong, heavy, corpulent man, I had seen alive and kicking a few days 

 ago, lying on his back, naked and helpless, straight, stiff, and motion- 

 less waiting to be cut up! Mr. L came into the room with his 



apparatus, while I was gazing with eyes, mouth, and nostrils at the dead 

 face ; and, pushing me aside, threw off the sheet and commenced work. 

 For my part, I never felt so comical in my life till my master, wanting 

 my assistarce to hold something, turned round, and seeing me pale and 

 gasping, holding on by the door for support, suddenly caught up a bason 

 of cold water, and threw the contents right in my face. "D thee!" 

 said he, a second time for this was a favourite expression. After this, I 

 got on very well ; but .the secrets of the dissecting-room are not for the 



5 



uninitiated. 



I. -remember, when once talking to a friend on this subject, in the same 



rambling way in which I write, he said to me, " Now, , although I 



am no anatomist myself, yet I can comprehend very well what are the 

 sources of a scientific man's enjoyment, when exploring with his knife the 

 intricate and awful machinery of the human frame, on a dead subject ; 

 but where, in God's name, is the pleasure of scaling walls, and scamper- 

 ing over the bosoms of the dead, associated with the lowest and most 

 desperate of mankind and after all, for what purpose ? why, to commit 

 what is neither more nor less than a downright and impious robbery !" 

 "Sir!" said I, eyeing the spooney with a smile, half contemptuous, half 

 triumphant " do you like hare-soup ?" The question posed him ; he 

 saw the drift of my argument at once. The fact is, he did like hare-soup ; 

 but he liked hunting the hare better. It was not long after the occur- 

 rence noted above, that my anatomical studies became so public as to ren- 

 der it convenient for me to leave at five minutes' warning ; and I set 



out for London, with little more to depend on than a letter of introduction 



to Dr. S , of street, from my master. As for Mr. L , I 



have never seen him since, although it is now twenty years ago; but 1 

 hear he is still alive, and still going on with his great work on anatomy. 

 He gets a very old man now, and, .1 have no doubt, will find every chapter 

 longer and emptier than its predecessor till Death, the grand dissector of 

 men and authors, writes Finis at the bottom. I was not long in London 



before my letter to Dr. S , my provincial Deputation, and fine talents 



for body -snatching, introduced me to the first professional society. Dr. 



S was one of the cleverest men, in the common acceptation of the 



word, I ever knew. His range was not extensive; but what he had, he 

 had at hand : there was no dubitation no shilly-shallying about him ; 

 you could never catch him unawares for his mind, such as it was, was in 

 a perpetual state of readiness. He was a Cockney, and pounded medi- 

 cines in a little shop within the sound of Bow bells, till he was four or 

 five and twenty. At this period the death of a relation put him in pos- 

 sefesion of a little money, with which he bought a country practice. He 

 had not long been in possession, when he had the impudence to fall in love 

 with the squire's daughter or her fortune no matter which ; and what 



