History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

History of Anatomy Laws in Illinois 395no person, who may be known to have relatives or friends shall be so deliveredor received without the written consent of such relatives or friends: And, provided,further, that the remains of no one detained for debt, or as a witness, oron suspicion of crime, or of a traveler, or of any person who shall have expresseda desire, in his or her last sickness, that his or her body may be interred, shall bedelivered or received as aforesaid, but shall be buried in the usual manner; And,provided, also that in case the remains of any person so delivered or received shallbe subsequently claimed by any surviving relative or friend for interment: Providedfurther, that notice shall be given to friends or relatives of any deceasedperson, if such friends or relatives are known to the authorities."Paragraph 2 specifies that after the bodies have been used by said professorsand teachers, the remains must be buried in a public cemetery.Paragraph 3 statesthat the bodies can be used for medical and surgicalstudy only, and paragraph 4 prescribes the penalties for contravention ofthe provisions of the law.Thus, after 25 years of agitation by the organized medical professionof the state, an "anatomical law"—even though inadequate and defective,because it was not mandatory—had come into being. The uninitated personmay attribute this lag of time to lack of energy or effort on the part of itssponsors, for he little realizes the tedious amount of propaganda that isnecessary to overcome the inertia and the obstacles, real or fancied, beforethe conditions are ripe or the constellation of circumstances are favorablefor the people's representatives to take action toward legislation. 41That the General Assembly was greatly divided in its opinion about thenecessity of an "Anatomy Act" and was loathe to make a positive decisiontowards a satisfactory solution of the problem is indicated in the discussionwhich followed when Dr. Albert B. Strong, at the meeting of the IllinoisState Medical Society in 1884 at Chicago, proposed an amendment to the"Anatomy Act." To reinforce his proposal, Dr. Strong gave the followingexplanations: "... all of the medical colleges of this city,through an associationof their demonstrators" (Demonstrators of Anatomy) "havemailed to every physician of Illinois during the past few days the draft of abill, which will be presented to the next Legislative Assembly of the State,intended as an amendment to the present law, entitled "An Act to Promotethe Science of Medicine and Surgery in the State of Illinois." Accompanyingthat draft isa personal letter directed by name to every physician in41The writer was confronted with this truth in 1936 when he had enlisted the cooperationof foremost anatomists in Chicago to seek legislation making obligatory thepost-mortem examination of executed criminals immediately after death. One of themotives underlying the aim was to provide the means of obtaining fresh, normal humantissues and organs, not changed by disease or decomposition, for immediate fixation andprocessing toward the preparation of histological specimens for study. We were directedto make our plea to the Governor's Committee preliminary to any step toward inauguratingsuch a bill. The chairman of this committee, at that time a leading psychiatrist in thestate, flatly refused to consider our petition, advising us to "let sleeping dogs lie."