History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

380 History of Medical Practice in Illinoisthe passage in 1831 of the bill just named. It is of historic significance, foraccording to Waite it may be considered to represent the first effectiveanatomical law in any English-speaking country, and it antedated theAnatomy Act of the English Parliament by fifteen months.This new law in Massachusetts, which gained public approval, permittedcivil officials to surrender for dissection any body that must otherwisebe buried at public expense. The law, however, was defective, becauseit contained exceptions and because it was not mandatory. Amendmentsduring subsequent years somewhat improved it. Meanwhile the repugnantbusiness of grave-robbing persisted and continued to agitate the publicmind.As the population grew and the need for more physicians called forthmore medical schools and preceptors, the number of unlawful disintermentsand resulting scandals and mob actions grew in proportion. Amongthe many incidents of this sort was the famous "Hubbardton Raid" at theVermont Academy of Medicine at Castleton in 1830, after the discoverythat a grave of a woman had been emptied. Waite has dramaticallydescribed the event, and also called attention tothe titlethe long poem, bearing"Song of the Hubbardton Raid," written and declaimed by Dr.John M. Currier at an "Oyster Supper" in Castleton on November 29,1879, to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the episode. This poem,500 lines long and written in the style of Longfellow's "Hiawatha," is aunique item in American medical literature.It is plain, from all the discussion up to this point about 'AnatomyLaws,' that Illinois, then a frontier state, was also in the forefront—and insome instances in advance—of medical legislation farther East. This istruly remarkable and induced Dr. Zeuch to say that "it is difficult to understandjust what actuated the solons to enact this law" of 1825, when therewas no medical college in the state at that time. But apparently he overlookedthe fact that the medical student of those times received his trainingeither in whole or in part under a preceptor in his office and on his rounds,and that some preceptors were assiduous in their teaching duties to the extremityof desecrating a grave in order to dispense anatomical knowledgefirst hand. Such preceptors, with a strongly developed calling to teach, someof them later becoming the founders of medical schools in Illinois, were emigratingas young men from the East, and entering the state either by way ofthe Cumberland Road, or by way of the Iroquois Trail in New York toBuffalo, thence along the Great Lakes to Chicago. As described elsewhere(see Zeuch, p. 644), several of these great teachers in the West (DanielMeeker, Daniel Brainard, George W. Richards, David Prince, and laterNathan S. Davis) came from the lowly country medical school at Fairfield inNew York.