History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

History of Anatomy Laws in Illinois 381Connecticut and New Hampshire promulgated laws almost identicalwith the Massachusetts law of 1831, hut they were repealed shortly afterwards,indicating the extent and strength of popular disapproval. ThatMassachusetts was ahle to secure and maintain its law probably rested onthe program of education which the state's medical society instituted inthis matter, and perhaps also on the fact that many members of the StateLegislature were graduates of Harvard University and could bring theirweight to bear directly on a problem which concerned their alma materprimarily. It required further growth of enlightened public opinion, whichgrowth is ever slow, and the impetus of concentrated effort, as representedby the establishment of the American Medical Association, for example,to influence legislation in the direction of more effective anatomical preparationalso in other parts of the Union.As already pointed out, the laws against grave-robbing were difficult toenforce. According to Wake, who examined all records of the CountyCourts in Vermont dealing with crimes during the twenty-year periodbetween 1820 and 1840, there were only seven indictments for the felonyof "disinterring the body of the dead." These indictments involved fourgrave-robbings and five offenders; one of these men was never brought totrial, two were acquitted by a jury, while two others were convicted andpunished. It was during the same twenty years that at least 400 cadaverswere dissected, as previously stated, of which not more than a score couldhave been procured legally. These reports prove how rarely a grave-robbingwas detected or perpetrators were apprehended.The two convictions in Vermont just mentioned had a most interestingsequel in the medical history of Illinois, as the present writer has learned.He will introduce its circumstances only briefly here, since he intends torecite them more fully in his projected work dealing with the history ofanatomy in our state. Long after the death of the two persons implicated,we are permitted, we believe, to bring them from obscurity or oblivionand to inscribe them on the roll of honor as martyrs to Science and thereforeamong its immortals. These men served a prison sentence—perhapsthe only sentence anywhere in the United States for "disinterring the bodyof the dead." 29 In March, 1834, two graves were found empty at Burling-28Journal of the General Assembly of the State of Vermont for the Session begun andholden at Montpelier, Washington County on the 14th day of October 1834 (Montpelier,Vt. 1834), p. 240, and Burlington Sentinel (Burlington, Vt., March 28, 1834), p. 2, Col. 5,cited by Waite, ibid. Waite quotes in full a document signed by 125 citizens of Burlington,and sent to the Faculty of the Medical College at Woodstock, on March 25, 1834:"Gentlemen, The Examination of John F. Daggett, bound over for trial at the nextterm of the County Court, recently a student in your institution, as well as veryintelligible intimations from him since his trial renders it certain, in the opinion of theundersigned and of this community that the body of Mrs. Holbrook late of this place wasremoved to Woodstock and is now in your college. Mrs. Holbrook was, and her family