EARLY HISTORY OF ANATOMY IN NEW ENGLAND 183 



1641. In essence, it stated that no man who was condemned to die 

 was to be put to death within four days after his sentence un- 

 less the court saw special cause to the contrary, as in the case 

 of martial law, nor should the body of any man so put to death 

 be unburied twelve hours unless it be in the case of an "anatomy." 

 It mentioned no penalty for the disinterment of human sub- 

 jects. This shows that the bodies of executed murderers were avail- 

 able for dissection in New England shortly after the landing of 

 the Pilgrims at Plymouth. 



Outside of this statute, there were two others enacted which 

 attempted to prohibit the disinterment of human bodies; one was 

 in Rhode Island and the other in Massachusetts. As early as 1655, 

 the assembly in the former state ruled that any person accused 

 of robbing graves of bodies, who was found guilty in court, would 

 be fined or suffer corporal punishment, or both (Waite, '45b). 



In the early days, witchcraft was in the air, so much so, that 

 in 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony felt it necessary to incor- 

 porate a major portion of England's Act of 1604 into its laws. 

 This was done in an attempt to stop the practice of removing 

 parts of the body for use as charms or in sorcery. The penalty for 

 violation was death as a felony with loss of benefit of clergy and 

 sanctuary. It was repealed in 1695 (Hartwell, 1881b). 



A law which was adopted in the same territory in 1660, stated 

 that a suicide is denied "the privilege of being buried in the com- 

 mon burying place of Christians, but shall be buried in some 

 common highway . . . and a cart load of stones laid upon the 

 grave as a brand of infamy . . . ." Those taking their own lives 

 were not made available for dissection in the New England Col- 

 onies (Waite, '45b). 



Further evidence of the shortage of bodies for dissection is 

 contained in the resolution of the Governor and Council of the 

 Massachusetts Bay Colony, dated 1647. It stated that it was con- 

 ceived as necessary to those students studying medicine and sur- 

 gery to have the liberty, once in four years, to read and anatomize 

 the body of a malefactor providing it was made available by 



I roper decision of the court. This followed the familiar pattern 

 eveloped previously in parts of Europe and it helped to estab- 



