History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

History of Anatomy Laws in Illinois 373"Be it enacted that if any person or personsshall take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her or their grave, orany other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin or bone or any otheipart of any dead person to be employed r used in any manner of witchcraft,sorcery, charm, or enchantment, he, she, or they shall suffer death."The only English law that dealt with grave-robbing, during the periodof the American colonies, made it a felony to take a shroud or other apparelwhich is the property of "whoever was in charge of the funeral." Alsothe person, if any, "who had a freehold of the soil may bring action oftrespass against such as dig or disturb it."Earlier, when there were no rigidlaws against various major offenses,or when people believed in the efficacy of anathema, they tried to protectthemselves also against pillage of their final resting place by uttering orinscribing a formal curse. From the many of such maledictions we mayquote here that of Shakespeare from his own epitaph, still visible andobeyed at Stratford-on-Avon.Good Friend, for Jesus' sake forbearTo dig the dust enclosed here;Blessed be the man that spares these stones,And cursed be he that moves my bones.The historian or archeologist on the trail of such curses, or allusions tothem, is able to "unearth" them in different cemeteries throughout theworld. A gravestone, not more than a century old, at Hoosick, New York,deserves to be quoted here: 18 "Ruth Sprague, aged nine, died 1846. Shewas stolen from the grave by Roderick R. Clow and dissected at Dr. P. M.Armstrong's office at Hoosick, New York, from which place her mutilatedremains were obtained and deposited here.Her body stolen by fiendish men,Her bones anatomized,Her soul, we trust, has risen to God,Where few physicians rise."After the Revolutionary War the first statute in the United States directedspecifically against stealing a dead body was enacted by NewHampshire in 1796, a few months after the authorities of Dartmouth Collegeannounced the inauguration of the teaching of medicine. The lawprovided as penalties a fine not to exceed $ 1,000, imprisonment not toexceed one year, and public whipping not to exceed thirty-nine stripes, 19M Waite, Frederick C: Grave Robbing in New England. Bull. Med. Library Association,vol. 33, 1945, pp. 272-29)."The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, XI, 24 cited by Waite,ibid. Waite remarks humorously: "It was a reduction by one from the original forty stripesapplied by the early Hebrews, as recorded in the Old Testament." (5th Book of Moses,called Deuteronomy, XXV, 3).