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persons who had died in their beds after they had been wasted by long 

 illness, and in a condition of body presumably quite different from that of 

 those same persons when in health. I saw very quickly that if I relied 

 upon mere observations and measurements of muscles made after death, 

 comparing them with living forces, I should get a false result, and a co- 

 efficient much too great, because the cross-section of the muscle in life 

 is certainly much larger than it is after death from long illness. There- 

 fore I had two courses before me : I had my choice of waiting for per- 

 sons who had died suddenly a violent death, and obtaining permission 

 to examine them, or of waiting for an opportunity of examining persons 

 who had died violently by the hands of the law. Now, in a country 

 like Ireland, there were unusual and extraordinary impediments to both 

 these processes. I placed myself in communication with the hospitals 

 of Dublin, and got early notice of every bad accident that came in. The 

 patient in the cases, such as I was sent for generally, died, but the cause 

 of death was so apparent that the coroner could not venture to interpose 

 and order a legal investigation of the body, which would have given 

 an opportunity for examination ; and the sympathy of friends in the 

 case of accident — the determination to wake the deceased person — is 

 so strong in Ireland that it is impossible to obtain permission from them 

 to make an examination. A wake is a matter of great necessity in all 

 cases in Ireland where it is possible, but in a case where the sensa- 

 tions and feelings have been aroused and sympathies excited by a 

 fall from a scaffold, or an accident in a mill, or any violent death, 

 an anatomist would be most unwise, if he attempted to make an 

 examination in such a case. Again, when I turned my attention to 

 executions, I had extreme difficulty, part of which is creditable to my 

 country — social or private crime is so extremely rare in Ireland that it 

 was almost impossible to find a case for examination. In such a case 

 there would have been no sympathy with the convicted criminal, and 

 the surgeon would have been permitted to conduct his investigation at 

 his leisure ; but in the majority of cases in Ireland the crime for which 

 executions are performed is agrarian crime, and is semipublic in its 

 character, exciting sympathy among large masses of the misguided 

 population who agree with the murderer; and this calls for great 

 care and caution on the part of any scientific man who would make 

 a man who has shot his landlord a subject for investigation. At last, 

 ladies and gentlemen, a brilliant idea came across my mind, which, 

 however, I was reluctantly compelled to set aside. I thought to myself, 

 what in the world is to hinder me from taking a farm in Westmeath, 

 deliberately and wilfully refusing to pay my rents, and in due time 

 shooting my landlord, and, instead of using him as a New Zealand 

 tenant would, dissecting him at my leisure. Then I have my muscular 

 coefficient problem and all my problems resolved. I need not say that 



