14 LIFE OF TEGETMEIER 



At the time of his studying surgery the 

 Apothecaries Act, passed in 1815, gave the 

 regulation of the medical curriculum to the 

 Apothecaries' Company, who, he wrote, " insisted 

 that each medical student should undergo five 

 years' apprenticeship to learn how to paste 

 labels on bottles and dispense with accuracy." 

 This disparaging comment on this, to him, dis- 

 tasteful aspect of the profession, occurs in an 

 article entitled, " In the Days of my Youth," 

 one of a series of " Chapters of Autobiography " 

 published by the weekly paper M.A.P. As 

 this gives a vivid picture of his early times and 

 experiences in his own words, I cannot do better 

 than quote the following extract from it. 



" I well recollect," he writes, " the execution 

 of Burke and Hare, who provided subjects for 

 dissection in the Scottish medical schools, bv the 

 simple process of murdering their victims. This 

 practice, inaugurated in Edinburgh, was followed 

 bv other murders in London. At a conversazione 

 which took place some time since at the College 

 of Surgeons, when his present Majesty (King 

 Edward) then Prince of Wales, received his 

 honorary degree, tho portraits of the miscreants 

 who followed the same practice in London, 

 were on view. These were drawn by the surgeon 

 of Newgate, himself no mean artist, after the 

 men were executed. In Little Windmill Street, 

 Haymarket, was, at that time, a school of 

 anatomy and medicine, and as the bodies of 

 murderers were given for dissection, it fell to the 

 lot of this school to receive that of Williams, one 



