1828.] Report from the Dissection Committee. 345 
the long run, be felt, in the growth and produce of the science, and the 
improved skill of all. 
The advantages, direct and indirect, ought not to be lost sight of. The 
‘extinction of the resurrection-trade is sure and certain. Society will get 
rid of a most disgusting and degrading employment, and one door of 
depravity be closed. The agents of this deplorable occupation, with the 
exception of three or four, who are spoken of as conducting their business 
with some decorum, are, all of them, to the amount of 200, of the very 
worst description of rogues which fertile London can produce. They 
are all of them thieves, more or less—making body-snatching the screen 
of other enormities, and employing their carts in the conveyance of the 
spoils of burglaries. 
~*~ The anatomists themselves will be shielded from the necessity of 
_ bargaining with these filthy wretches—of violating, personally, and by 
subornation, one law, to enable them to avoid incurring the penalties of 
another—of exposing themselves to upbraidings and insults—the perils 
of popular odium—the indignation of an excited and ignorant multitude— 
protected from the impositions and extortions of the most worthless of 
men—from informations—from the visits of the officers of the law—from 
prosecutions—from indemnities. 
Lecturers will gain a fairer remuneration for their labours. Never 
‘overpaid, under the existing system, they have been obliged to purchase 
subjects, at a high price, and sell them to the students at a low one—buy- 
ing them at fourteen guineas, for instance, and selling at eight, and the cost 
of indemnities falling wholly upon them. Mr. Granger states he incurred 
an expense of 50/. for allowances to one resurrection man, who was two 
years in prison; and during the present season he has expended several 
} ‘guineas in supporting another man’s family while he was in prison. 
‘Private lecturers may also resume, and students who have no time to 
lose, may pursue their studies through the summer as well as winter— 
‘which, by the difficulties thrown in the way of supply, they have been, 
for some time, prevented from doing. The students too—few of whom 
can bear expences—will be relieved ; and instead of eight guineas for a 
subject, the utmost need be but two—even if it be thought expedient, 
which we think it would, to impose upon them the expense of burial. 
The country will quickly share the benefit in the increased skill of 
the profession. Of the kind of improvement, we may judge from a reply 
‘of Sir Astley Cooper’s, to a question from the Committee :— 
. © A man, when I was first at St. Thomas’s hospital, which was in the year 
1784, used to exhibit himself, and receive money from the students for the 
exhibition, because he was one of those remarkable persons who had re- 
‘covered from an operation for what surgeons call popliteal aneurism, which 
‘disease arises from the giving way of an artery in the ham, and for which it is 
required that the artery of the thigh should be tied; this man had the artery 
tied, and recovered. ~At the present moment, there is not an individual 
who is educated in London, who would not be ashamed of himself if he 
could not perform that operation, or tie any of the accessible arteries in the 
body. Surgery is also improved in the diminution of operations ; for at the 
time at which I first entered the profession, I should say there were at least 
three operations for one at the present moment. At that time, a man who 
had an injury to his head, was very generally trephined ; but now that opera- 
‘tion is rarely performed. At that time, limbs were amputated for compound 
_ dislocations, but now very rarely.” 
MEM. New Serian<aV ov. VI. Nov34. 2Y 
