History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

History of Anatomy Laws in Illinois 377rough-box that enclosed the coffin, impeded the spade or made a quicktheft virtually impossible. Some cemeteries had public vaults, securely builtof stone and locked with an iron door, in which bodies were placed temporarilyuntil removed for permanent burial later. Sometimes a body wasinterred in the garden of the home of the deceased and then, after somedays, exhumed and transferred to the cemetery. Or sometimes well-to-dofamilies hired a watcher, armed with a shotgun to guard the grave duringthe nights of the first week or ten days, after which period the unembalmedbody was deemed unfit for dissection.Commensurate with these various countcrmeasures was the developmentof the ingenuity, technique and art of the grave-robbers. To render thegrave-watcher harmless was usually not the most difficult task. "An agentof those who planned a disinterment plied the watcher with whiskey late inthe afternoon to such extent that he failed to arrive at the graveside, orarriving he slept soundly at his post." 25 There are tales, too, of sleepywatchers, in the late hours of the night, being surprised, gagged and bound.The acquisition of bodies for dissection was seasonal, correspondingto the periods when medical schools were in session, because during mostof the 19th century few of these institutions had provision for preservingbodies. Since the majority of the schools gave anatomical instruction duringthe autumn and winter, the procuring of cadavers generally ceased duringthe spring and summer. From what has been said, it is apparent that it wasimportant to steal a body as soon as possible after burial; if possible, inthe first night. Then, too, the grass and ground which had been trampledat the time of the funeral would betray less tell-tale signs of despoliation.Private burial plots on farms, or cemeteries, lying some distance from thefarthest dwellings of a village or town, were the favored because leasthazardous locations for disinterments. A graveyard more than twenty milesfrom a medical college was usually safe from plundering because a span ofhorses conveying the stolen body could not traverse a greater distance duringthe night in time to arrive at the college before dawn and before earlyrisers might see suspicious activities there.We need not dwell here on the carefully worked out technique of thegrave-robbers, since this has been detailed by Waite and others. 26Thesewriters describe the methods used in obtaining knowledge of prospectiveburials and in locating the grave accurately, the number of persons necessaryto do the job promptly, the equipment, the manner of getting at thecoffin and removing the body from it, the restoration of the original outwardappearance of the site, the transportation of the body to the place ofdissection, and the subsequent steps taken to destroy the evidence.25Waite, ibid.28Waite, in his writings, gives an extensive bibliography.