History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

382 History of Medical Practice in Illinoiston, Vermont. Two brothers, the younger one a student at the ClinicalSchool of Medicine at Woodstock, were arrested for the felony, tried andconvicted. For some reason the judge in this case, unlike other judges who,recognizing the inadequacy of the Anatomy laws, were extremely lenientin punishing the illegal acquisition of human material for dissection, imposedthe full minimum sentence defined in the statute, namely three yearsin the state prison. The records of the Vermont State Prison show that theolder of the two brothers served the full sentence. The younger brother,John, released after serving part of the sentence, returned to the WoodstockMedical College, was graduated and left immediately for the West. Dr.Zeuch, in his biographical notations about outstanding physicians in WillCounty, Illinois, reports the following regarding a Dr. John F. Daggett,on page 531 (Hist, of Med. Practice in Illinois, vol. I): "Born in Vermontin 1815. He began teaching at the age of sixteen. At nineteen he studiedmedicine at Woodstock, Vermont, and later at Pittsfield, Massachusetts,graduating from the school of Woodstock in 1836. Beginning the practiceof medicine at Lockport"(6 miles north of Joliet) "in 1838, he continuedfor forty years there, and it is stated that for many years he did all thepractical operative surgery in the county about. He was elected to thesenate in 1871." Zeuch says nothing—and probably knew nothing—aboutthe episode that interests us here, and it was by mere accident or coincidencethat the present writer became aware of the identity of the medicalstudent who had been confined to a Vermont prison for hisanatomicalzeal. We are not satisfied that the meager sketch of Dr. Daggett given byZeuch or in "A History of Will County," published (Wm. L. Baron Jr.and Co.) in Chicago in 1878, does justice to the full stature of the man. Thelatter report has a few additional data and a portrait (lithograph) ofDr. Daggett. This report (in 1878) states that he still lives in Lockport and,"though 63 years, the Doctor looks at if he was good to practice his profession40 years longer." He "owns 500 acres in Lockport township, alsoare highly respectable; and the disinterment of her remains has occasioned to her relativesa distress which you can properly appreciate, and is universally regarded as a vileoutrage which will not be submitted to unless the laws have lost their power to punish."Information upon which we rely renders it probably that the dissecting knife has notbeen used upon her remains; and the undersigned submit to you, Gentlemen, whetheryour duty to the publick does not demand that her body shall be restored. We are willingto beleive that gentlemen so respectable as the Faculty of the Woodstock Medical Schoolwould countenance in the smallest degree an outrage of the kind—and although we fullybeleive that the true character of the outrage was unknown to you at the time, and wouldbe indignantly reprobated at any time, yet we can have little doubt that your endeavorsto procure the restoration of the body would be successful, and probably would be thesole means of effecting it."We ask, therefore, your assistance and beleive it will be granted, as due to justice, tothe feelings of a family lacerated for the means, the atrocious motive of gain, to publicopinion and to the character of your institution. Yours respectfully—"