History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

History of Anatomy Laws in Illinois 387colleges that the cadavers were obtained from distant cities, and of thecity colleges that they got theirs from remote country districts, it is likely,that nearly all of this material was disinterred in the immediate neighborhood.When 3,J rumors of grave robberies disturbed a community, editors,who generally were on the side of the local medical faculties, stated intheir newspapers that such felonies had been committed for the benefit ofsome distant institution. More frequent than attacks by mobs were thevisitations of the sheriff. But his searches were usually without resulteitherbecause he was in connivance with the authorities of the medicalcollege and warned them in advance of an impending search, or because thecollege had clever ways of hiding the few cadavers illegally in their possession.Such a body when secured was rapidly dissected; diaries of studentsshow that they worked continuously, even into the early hours of morning,and were excused from attending lectures until the dissection was completed,usually within a week. If there was danger of interruption, therewere various devices of concealment. One such place was the cupola, anarchitectural feature of many early medical school buildings, not onlyornamental but useful. By block and tackle several cadavers could behoisted into the cupola through a trap door, whereupon the ladder bywhich this had been reached could be hidden between the partitions ofthe building. And sometimes only bold force could overcome imminentviolence, as for instance at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1852, when the Medical Departmentof Western Reserve College, anticipating an attack by a mobwhich had wrecked and destroyed another medical school in the city,procured guns and ammunition from a neighboring armory. "The whitehaireddean, musket in hand, stood on the front steps of the medicalbuilding with armed students behind him awaiting the mob which didnot come when its scouts advised it of the preparation for its reception."After the Civil War, when railroads were extended, the shipment ofcadavers from distant parts increased. Then many bodies of southernNegroes were used in northern medical schools, being shipped to them inbarrels labeled as some commodity. A demonstrator, and later professor ofAnatomy in a medical college in New England, described to Waite thearrangement he had, even as late as in the "eighties" and "nineties," forprocuring an adequate supply of bodies for his classes; ". . . . he receivedtwice in each session a shipment of twelve bodies of Southern Negroes.They came in barrels marked 'turpentine' and consigned to a local hardwarestore that dealt in painting materials." These examples suffice to showhow many a medical school, to meet the threat of extinction, was compelledto resort to various subterfuges and had to circumvent, too,the laws pertainingto the traffic in bodies.39Waite, ibid.