344 Report from the Dissection Committee. [Ocr. 
chance, or their share. The objection is not only nonsensical, but inap- 
plicable. The bodies are unclaimed ones, and the rich are never in that 
forlorn and lonely condition. Besides, the rich, by the inevitable course 
and destiny of circumstances, are the persons who are entitled, or at least 
alone enabled, to secure to themselves the exemptions and privileges of 
society. Privations and hardships are the inevitable lot of the poorest ; 
and it seems, indeed, a small additional affliction, to suffer that, which 
while alive would probably trouble them little—which they know not 
would certainly befall them—and of which, when dead, they must be 
insensible. 
An all the recent exhumations, which have justly excited so much dis- 
gust, it is the poor that have been the disinterred parties. They are 
buried nearer the surface ; the rich are commonly bricked up, or monu- 
mented over, or placed in securer coffins, or too deep in the earth to be 
accessible to the body-snatcher. 
Moreover, the poor are, after all, the very persons who are most in- 
terested in the cultivation and spread of anatomical knowledge. Always 
there will be some skilful men, and their services the rich will command. 
But the more medical men are made effective anatomists, the more will 
the utilities from this source come down to the poor. The rich now 
have the benefit of the skilful, and the poor, except in hospitals, have 
not ; but if the race of practitioners generally improve, the poor must 
share the advantage. 
Objections are not yet exhausted—it will be recollected by some, that 
with this facility for obtaining bodies, the students who are now gone to 
Paris, and Dublin, and Germany, will all rush back to London, and 
besiege the schools; instead of 500 dissectors, there will probably be 
speedily a thousand—and how are these to be supplied? If there be a 
probability that the students will multiply to a thousand—the unclaimed 
bodies will, as probably amount to 3,000, which at once removes the 
embarrassment. 
Still some may on this ground be seriously alarmed at the augmenta- 
tion of numbers in the medical schools, and the consequent inadequacy 
of the unclaimed funds, and therefore we will venture to suggest, that 
these students need not all flock to London—that nothing but a senseless 
regulation of the College of Surgeons makes attendance in London 
imperative. The only schools the college chooses to recognise are those 
of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen ; and among 
other qualifications required, is attendance, for one year, at St. Bar- 
tholomew’s, St. Thomas’s, the Westminster, Guy’s, St. George’s, the 
London, and the Middlesex, in London; the Richmond, Stevens’s, and 
the Meath, in Dublin; and the Royal Infirmaries in Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
and Aberdeen ; or four years at a recognised provincial hospital, and six 
months at least at one of the before-mentioned schools of anatomy. The 
experience to be gained at many of the country hospitals far exceeds that 
of some London ones. Westminster makes up only 82 beds, while many 
provincial institutions have 300. 
Remove these restrictions, and many of those who are now, by neces- 
sity, and little to their convenience, and not much to their advantage, 
forced up to London, would remain in the provinces. Manchester, 
Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, would become effective medical 
schools, and the number of town students would thus be kept down, and 
the supply of subjects of course undrained. A greater number might 
then also be granted to superior and ardent students, and the benefit, in. 
