History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

37° History of Medical Practice in Illinoisand better knowledge, instruction, insight, learning, and experience in the science,and faculty of surgery."^A special "charter for anatomies" was granted to the College of Physiciansof London by Queen Elizabeth in 1564; it provided that four bodies ofexecuted felons be annually delivered to that organization for anatomizing.A century later, Charles II (in 1663) increased the yearly quota ofbodies to six and directed in addition that after they have been anatomizedthe remains should be "decently buried."In his excellent account of the history of the Anatomy laws in NewEngland, Professor Waite, already cited, shows how some phases ofstatutory law (i.e. the expressed declaration of the will of the legislature)were derived from common law (i. e. springing from the "accumulation ofprecedents, such as an act of a magistrate or a judge to which no objectionwas made by higher authority"). Blackstone, in his "Commentaries," wrote:"In every atrocious crime" judges were permitted to superadd "other instancesof terror, pain and disgrace such as in murder,public dissection."This procedure under common law became Englishstatutory law in 1752, in the reign of George II, when Parliament proclaimed"An Act for better preventing the horrid Crime of Murder,"which made the penalty of dissection mandatory, though "a power isallowed to the judge upon good and sufficient cause to respite the executionand relax the other restraints of the act." Its preamble said: "Whereasthe horrid crime of murder has been more frequently perpetrated thanformerly and whereas it is thereby become necessary thatsome further terror and peculiar infamy be added to the punishment ofdeath"If the murderer was executed in the City of Londonor in the County of Middlesex, his body should be conveyed immediately,according to the dictate of the statute, to the hall of the Surgeons' Companyto be anatomized. Penalties were provided for any attempt to prevent dissection.If the execution took place outside the county, any surgeon willingwas to do the dissection; otherwise the body was to be buried.Thus, both precedent and English law sanctioned dissection in our country'scolonial epoch, and the public took no objection to private lessons inAnatomy if conducted on executed criminals. Even post-mortem examinationof prominent persons to benefit medical knowledge was permitted,for there is the report of Dr. Johannes Kerfbyle who autopsied GovernorSlaughter of New York in 1690. 14 Sixty years later (1750), Drs. John Bardand Peter Middleton of New York City injected and dissected the bodyof Hermanus Carroll, a murderer, "for the instruction of the young menu Hartwell, E. M.: The Hindrance to Anatomical Study in the United States, includinga Special Record of the Struggles of our Early Anatomical Teachers. Annals of Anat. andSurg. Brooklyn, New York, vol. Ill, 1881, p. 209-225.