118 HUMAN DISSECTION. ITS DRAMA AND STRUGGLE 



recipient of a cadaver was placed in the same category as a grave 

 robber so that every student or teacher could become involved. 

 An odd feature of the law of James I was that it was not actually 

 directed against the act of body snatching performed for the 

 purpose of dissection; rather, it was aimed at preventing the use 

 of bodily parts in witchcraft. 



Another twist was added in the year of 1788, in the court case 

 of the King vs. Lynn, when it was decided that resurrecting a 

 human body did not constitute a felony since a corpse, by itself, 

 did not represent real property. This decision had far-reaching 

 significance since it established a forensic precedent which was 

 copied later in other English-speaking countries, notably the 

 United States. However, any part of the burial vestment was con- 

 sidered to be real property and, if removed, classified it as a more 

 serious crime. The resurrectionists had enough intelligence to 

 strip cadavers of habiliments and leave them in the coffin (Gutt- 

 macher, '35). 



The following factual material is taken from the excellent ar- 

 ticle of Guttmacher ('35): removing human bodies from their 

 graves became widespread throughout Ireland, Scotland and Eng- 

 land and was practiced by two classes of men. On one side, were 

 those who belonged to the medical profession, either surgeons, 

 teachers or students. They were of a relatively high caliber, being 

 well-educated men, who were interested in cadavers only from the 

 scientific standpoint. Dissection of man was regarded as an op- 

 portunity to advance their knowledge, meet the medical standards 

 imposed on them, make themselves better practitioners and thus 

 serve mankind more adequately. In the early days of British 

 medicine, it was the surgeons who, on a small scale, did most of 

 the body snatching. They were careful in their selection, choos- 

 ing bodies from fresh, un watched graves. As the students in- 

 creased in enrollment, they shared in the program either to the 

 extent of organizing their own foraging parties or aiding others 

 more versed in the art. This outside participation was necessary 

 in order to obtain a supply to meet the needs which they had 

 helped to create. 



It was natural that the "gentlemen" body snatchers, as they 

 were called, were unable to cope with the increasing demand lor 



