HUMAN DISSECTION IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC STATES 231 



the Civil War. He cited the instance of 500 students, distributed 

 among several schools, dissecting bodies, all of which had been 

 obtained illegally. He claimed that the experiences of the North- 

 South conflict taught military suregons how important anatomy 

 could be. The sentiment began to undergo a change, thereafter, 

 becoming more favorable toward the practice of dissection. After 

 the hostilities had ceased, Washington became infested with res- 

 urrectionists and they did a large volume of business. One, by 

 name of Janssen, was frequently arrested, particularly because he 

 was bold enough to raid the better class cemeteries. His activities 

 ranged as far as Baltimore. In the capital city, he stole the body 

 of a hanged criminal and sold it to a medical school; the next 

 night he re-stole it with the intention of selling it to another in- 

 stitution but was caught with the booty in his hack. After serving 

 the term of his sentence, he had the temerity to give daily lec- 

 tures in one of the smaller theaters in Washington, using a dummy 

 as a sham corpse. During his activities in Washington, the police 

 were kept so busy that the ordinary course of business was badly 

 disrupted. The medical schools finally combined to make up a 

 purse to induce Janssen to depart from the region; this is prob- 

 ably the only case of such an instance on record. His final arrest 

 for grave robbery was made in 1884. 



It wasn't until 1902 that the United States Congress created 

 an Anatomical Board consisting of the district health officer, two 

 members from each medical school, one from the postgraduate 

 school and one from the medical school of the Army and Navy. 

 The board had to be notified of all unclaimed persons dying 

 within the District of Columbia and they had to be apportioned 

 to the medical institutions according to the number of students 

 enrolled each year (Correspondence, '02). 



C. Dissection in Virginia- A.D. 1830 to 1865 



In Virginia, the legislature refused to sanction the dissection 

 of executed murderers, so that it was impossible to anatomize 

 legally (Hartwell, 1881a; Krumbhaar, '22). A pioneer in the 

 teaching of practical anatomy there was Augustus L. Warner. He 

 gave lectures on this subject in a private dissecting-hall located at 



