History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

368 History of Medical Practice in Illinoisact to prevent the disinterment of the dead." Dr. Zeuch in Volume I"The History of Medical Practice in Illinois (preceding 1850)" expressedthe opinion that it manifested antagonism to the medical profession becauseit would hinder physicians and surgeons from obtaining and usinghuman cadavers for dissection. But a reading of that law shows that thoughthe lawmakers were swayed by the prejudices of the times, they did providelegal means of securing such anatomical material even if the material soobtained was woefully inadequate. For after the Act states that"If any person or persons shall open the grave or tomb where the body or bodiesof any deceased person or persons shall have been deposited, and shall remove thebody or bodies or remains of any deceased person or persons from the grave orplace of sepulture, for the purpose of dissection, or any surgical or anatomicalexperiment or any other purpose, without the knowledge and consent of the nearrelatives of the deceased, or shall in any way aid, assist, counsel or procure thesame to be done, or shall aid or assist in any surgical or anatomical experimenttherewith, or dissection thereof, knowing said body or bodies to have been sotaken or removed from the place or places of their sepulture, every such personso offending, being thereof duly convicted, by indictment before the circuit court,shall forfeit and pay a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and shall be imprisonedin the common jail of the county, not more than twelve nor less thanthree months, at the discretion of the court, the fine for the use of the county tobe paid as other fines are required to be," it is"Provided that the provisions of this act shall not be construed to extend to thedissection of the body of any criminal, where the same has been or shallbe directedto be delivered up for such dissection by competent authority."ofFor a clearer view of the progress of anatomical legislation in Illinois,it is appropriate to digress here and refer briefly to the history of suchlegislation in other parts of the United States that were colonized muchearlier. A colonial writer, one named Eliot, 11 reports in a communicationpublished in London in 1647, as follows:"Our young students in Physic may be trained up better than yet they bee, whohave onely theoretical knowledge and are forced to fall to practice before everthey saw an anatomie made, or duly trained up in making experiments for wenever had but one anatomie in the Countrey, which Mr. Giles Firmin (now inEngland) did make and read upon very well, but no more of that now."It is probable that this dissection was made at Ipswich, Massachusetts,sometime between 1641 and 1644 on a body acquired legally. 12 In 1641—twenty years after the landing of the Puritan pilgrims at Plymouth,Massachusetts—the colony had formulated its first code of laws knownas "The Body of Liberties." Among its decrees is one which runs:u Eliot, J.:The Day breaking if not the Sunrising of the Gospell with the Indians inNew England. 366 pp. London. Richard Cotes, 1647. Reprinted in Collections of theMassachusetts Historical Society, 98 pp. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Charles Folsom, 1834. P. 57.12Waters, T. F.: Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 336 pp. Salem. The SalemPress, 1905.