178 HUMAN DISSECTION. ITS DRAMA AND STRUGGLE 



of Queen's College of Edinburgh. It was hoped that it would 

 form a strong rivalry with the University. In 1841, Knox applied 

 for the lectureship in anatomy to the art students of the Scottish 

 Academy, which was vacant, but did not receive a single vote from 

 the trustees of the Board. 



The status of Knox reached a bad state in 1842. He began 

 lecturing privately in anatomy in Edinburgh in November, but 

 was unable to attract a class. In the following session, he attempted 

 to give a course in physiology, with the same results. Public and 

 professional confidence in him seemed to be lost and he could find 

 no vacancy in his country. As a last resort, he unsuccessfully ap- 

 plied for the open chair of physiology at the University, first hurl- 

 ing depreciating remarks against his competitors for the position. 

 Living in a sort of hand-to-mouth fashion, he finally died on De- 

 cember 20, 1862. 



One of the factors which revolved around the performance 

 of anatomizing human bodies during the period when the resur- 

 rectionists were in their heyday was the susceptibility of infec- 

 tion. Probably, the adverse feeling which prevailed against anat- 

 omists of that era might have been neutralized had the public 

 been made aware of the dangers which existed when performing 

 dissections. It took only the minutest drop of poisoned human 

 virus entering an abrasion in the skin to quickly invade the whole 

 system and cause death; this could occur in less than fifty hours. 

 According to Lonsdale (1870), one or more incidents of infection 

 occurred in the anatomical laboratory during every winter ses- 

 sion; oftentimes men of great promise were victims. He stated that 

 the dread influences and casualties surrounding this subject would 

 fill a chapter of horrors. He mentioned that a Professor Christison 

 and two of his colleagues, during a period of thirty-two years, 

 treated upwards of 280 medical students for fever caught in the 

 hospital wards, only a part of those who suffered. Lonsdale re- 

 membered four promising students who died from such during 

 the month of November, 1887. It was calculated that of the 2,500 

 physicians practicing in Ireland, 500, or one-fifth, contracted 

 typhus, or idiopathic fever as it was tlien called, and of that num- 

 ber, 127 succumbed. A large proportion of the cadavers whidi 

 reached the dissection-room, were those who had died from this 



