HUMAN DISSECTION IN IRELAND-A.D. 1590 TO 1885 131 



Stances, he made immediate arrangements with the clergy for its 

 removal. This Irishman was of an unusual character in that he 

 believed that the general antipathy against anatomy was based 

 on false sentimentality and he started a one-man campaign to 

 rectify the situation. Although he was well-supplied with sub- 

 jects, he tried to educate the cultured people that there was 

 nothing necessarily repulsive or inhuman in the study of prac- 

 tical anatomy and he encouraged the willing of bodies to the 

 University; he met some success. Three hundred and fourteen 

 persons put their signatures to an anatomical agreement of this 

 nature about the year of 1827. The anatomist was somewhat dis- 

 appointed in this number as he had anticipated a thousand 

 (Macalister, 1900). 



Macartney was acclaimed by everyone as a teacher; combin- 

 ing enthusiasm, culture, genius and industry, he was judged to 

 be an expert anatomist and philosophical biologist, far in ad- 

 vance of his period. He stored his mind with knowledge, not all 

 learned from books, and exerted a marked and favorable influence 

 on his pupils. By 1827, he had increased his classes to 200, in spite 

 of the fact that much of his early teaching was done in an old, 

 wholly unsuitable edifice. Although a new structure was erected 

 in 1825, he said, it was the "worst-devised building for the pur- 

 pose," that he had ever seen. It had been constructed without 

 suggestions from him. So popular were his courses that students 

 came from England, Wales, Scotland and America, making up 

 about one-sixth of his pupils. Many later became teachers. There 

 were some who believed that he matched Robert Knox of Edin- 

 burgh in ability and might have been his superior. His one weak- 

 ness may have been that he provided too much superintendence 

 for the students. He demonstrated from dissections, divided his 

 pupils into groups and emphasized that they should be mutually 

 helpful. His teaching museum was kept open twenty-four hours 

 a day (Macalister, 1884, 1900). 



The quantity of bodies, obtained principally from Bully's 

 Acre, though large, were not all available to Macartney. He was 

 supplied by resurrectionists of whom there were about fifty in 

 the business in Dublin, led by a person named Tom Geraghty. 

 Macartney estimated that 600 to 800 cadavers were used during 



