EARLY HISTORY OF ANATOMY IN NEW ENGLAND 185 



strations would be performed on dissected cadavers. It is possible 

 that even though some favoring judge might have provided the 

 body of an executed murderer so that human material could be 

 presented, no publicity was made through the press, because of 

 the hostility and antagonism that it would arouse (Ball, '28; 

 Sabin, '34; Toner, 1874). 



The scarcity of laws in Colonial New England indicates that 

 the public did not suspect any great amount of body snatching. 

 The members of the profession who were most interested in at- 

 tending and performing dissections at that time were the physi- 

 cians who were either preparing for surgery or serving as pre- 

 ceptors. Without medical schools, it was the latter who taught 

 anatomy to apprentices in medicine. In order to obtain an ade- 

 quate supply, it is probable that surgeons or their agents resorted 

 to grave robbing. Such removals may have been in excess of what 

 the public suspected. 



Pertinent records point to the fact that very few bodies were 

 made available to physicians in colonial times through legislative 

 acts. Some students migrated to Europe in the early 18th Century 

 to take advantage of more favorable conditions there. Thomas 

 Bulfinch of Boston traveled to London to study anatomy under 

 Cheselden. The same was true for Sylvester Gardiner of Rhode 

 Island. 



It was after the Revolution, when medical schools began 

 to be organized in New England, that the public became more 

 concerned with body snatching. In fact, they began almost imme- 

 diately to associate this practice with these institutions. When 

 Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, proposed teaching medi- 

 cine in the early spring of 1796, the general assembly of the state 

 almost immediately passed its first law regarding grave robbing. 

 It provided the following penalties: a fine not to exceed $1,000, 

 imprisonment for not more than one year, and public whipping 

 not to exceed thirty-nine lashes, any or all of these to be imposed 

 depending upon the discretion of the court. The last of these 

 punishments, the thirty-nine stripes inflicted with a whip, goes 

 back to Biblical times, the era of the New Testament. It was 

 one less than the original forty applied by the early Hebrews, 

 based on statements in the Old Testament. Since the Vermont 



