DISSECTION IN MEDICAL SCHOOLS OF NEW ENGLAND I97 



through his body, or that it be given to a surgeon for dissection. 

 Both were considered by the public to be a humiliating end. The 

 winner of such a duel, if he killed his opponent, could be executed 

 and his body treated in the same manner. A statute was enacted 

 in 1805 in which dueling was included with murder and some 

 other crimes. These were not strictly anatomical laws, for they 

 were intended to add a further penalty and greater stigma to the 

 crimes rather than to advance the study of anatomy. 



The double legal source of bodies, those of executed mur- 

 derers and duelists, provided only a small number between 1800 

 and 1829. There were about sixty executions in Massachusetts 

 during that interval and all were not sentenced to be dissected. 

 It is easy to see why the public placed anatomizing in close re- 

 lation to major crime and considered it as a posthumous disgrace 

 (Waite, '45b). 



An unusual student, a resident of Quebec, by name of La 

 Terriere, attended Harvard Medical School during the years 

 1788-1789. He was forty-five years of age and he made up the odd 

 member of a total class of two; the other was Lyman Spalding, 

 who later had much to do with the founding of the medical col- 

 lege at Dartmouth. The diary of La Terriere tells about the 

 Harvard Medical School. He stated that the medical institution 

 was fortunate and reaped a full harvest of four executed crimi- 

 nals for dissection during the academic session. Participating in 

 a body snatching incident, he wrote of it in a sanguinary manner. 

 He began by describing the death of a fat, old spinster who was 

 followed to her grave. After the funeral, he and his colleagues 

 bribed a greedy caretaker who consented to let them abscond with 

 the body the same night. To make it easier for the amateur resur- 

 rectionists, the sexton covered the coffin with only a light layer of 

 dirt. Because he carelessly left a shovel lying close by, the relatives 

 discovered the thievery the following morning and immediately 

 created a furor, demanding that a search warrant be issued by 

 the governor. As a member of the medical class of two, La Terriere 

 was suspected; he gravely suggested that the head of the state was 

 also a member of the Harvard Corporation which was enough 

 to squelch the matter. He is known to have commented after- 

 wards that, in his opinion, the woman was a superb specimen. 



