HUMAN DISSECTION IN SCOTLAND-A.D. 1500 TO 1958 157 



there being a publick Body at Barbers and Surgeons Hall, the 

 Demonstrations of Anatomy and the Operations of Surgery will 

 be at the Hall this evening and tomorrow at six o'clock precisely, 

 in the Amphitheatre" (Guttmacher, '35). This indicates that the 

 dissections were open to the public, that they were held in the 

 evening, and lasted only two days. 



It was during the tenure of Monro I that two nurses, Helen 

 Torrence and Jean Waldie, residents of Edinburgh, committed 

 the first known murder in Great Britain in which the body was 

 sold for anatomical use. The time was 1752. It started with a 

 promise by them to supply some doctor's apprentices with a sub- 

 ject. Their original plan revolved around the death watch of a 

 child. After he succumbed, and the opportunity presented itself, 

 they expected to substitute something for the body in the coffin. 

 They were thwarted in this attempt because the parents refused 

 to hire them for the job. They then decided to victimize another 

 boy, the son of John Dallas, a prominent man of Edinburgh. 

 When the eight-year-old lad was alone in his home, they seized 

 him, enticed him to their own premises and smothered him. It 

 is said that he was carried to the room of one of the surgeons, in 

 the apron of Helen Torrence, quite a feat for a woman. She was 

 offered 2 shillings but bargained for another 10 pence, which she 

 received, and used to buy a drachm. Because of the crudeness of 

 execution, the facts in the case soon came to light and both were 

 hanged for their inhuman crime (Burr, '17; Haggard, '29; Gutt- 

 macher, '35). 



Alexander Monro II has been judged to have been an even 

 more brilliant teacher and investigator than his illustrious father. 

 He succeeded to the chair in 1758 and held it until 1798. For six 

 decades, the University held a virtual monopoly of students dur- 

 ing ^vhich no opposition prevailed against the teaching of the first 

 t^vo Monros. However, no less a personage than John Bell, in 

 1786, publicized the fact that neither of the pair was an operating 

 surgeon and held that it was a weak spot in their instruction. 



John Bell began lecturing in 1786; he was so successful that 

 by 1790 he built a private anatomical school which had a large 

 enrollment. He is regarded as the founder of surgical anatomy. 

 It took thirteen years before a bitter faction at the University 



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