History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

History of Anatomy Laics in Illinois 369"No man condemned to dye shall be put to death within fowere dayes after hiscondemnation unless the Corte see spetial cause to the contrary as in the case ofmartiall law, nor shall the body of any man so put to death be unburied twelvehours unless itbe in the case of Anatomic"The governor and council of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, recognizinghow seldom the body of an executed murderer was made available fordissection, adopted a resolution in1647 which said:"We conceive it very necessary yt such as studies physick and churugery mayhave liberty to read -f to anatomize once in four years some malefactor in casethere be such as the Corte shall alow of."Though the action of the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colonyshows that they were wide awake to its needs, their resolution was notunusual for it had been customary and almost an unwritten rule for centuriesthat the bodies of criminals could be used by the doctors for anatomicalstudy and experiment. Three centuries before the Christian era thePtolemies legalized this practice at Alexandria, and fifteen centuries laterat the dawn of European medicine the illustrious Hohenstaufen emperorFrederick II voiced the demand of dissection in his "Constitutiones" of1221. Since then, and in similar wise, precedent and custom developedinto common law and from this into statutory law in the different countries—Italy, Germany, France, Holland, England, etc.— at the same pace inwhich the episodes and scandals of 'grave-robbing' and 'body-snatching'increased in connection w r ith the growing need for medical knowledgeduring the 'revival of learning' and the Renaissance. Long before 1505,when the magistrates of Edinburgh granted a "seal of cause" to the Guildof Surgeons and Barbers for the annual dissection of an executed criminal,such dissection had been sanctioned almost everywhere on the Europeancontinent. In the United States the various anatomical laws can be tracedto the provisions in Great Britain, w r here w r e find the first reference to suchan act by the English Parliament in 1540 in the reign of Henry VIII givinga chartered right to the Guild of Barbers and Surgeons of London 13 andstating in one of its clauses:"That the said masters or governors of the mystery and commalty of barbers andsurgeons of London and their successors yearly forevershalland may have and take without contradiction four persons condemned, adjudgedand put to death for felonyfor anatomies without any furthersuit or labour to be made to the King's highness, his heirs or successors for thesame; and to make incisions of said dead bodiesfor further13The Statutes at Large from the Thirty -Second Year of King Henry VIII to the SeventhYear of King Edward VI Inclusive. Edited by D. Pickering. Vol. V. 412 pp. Cambridge,England: Joseph Bentham (for Charles Bathurst), 1763. (Cited by Frederick C. Waite,in "Development of Anatomical Laws in the States of New England," published in theNew England Journal of Medicine, vol. 233, 1945, pp. 716-726).