History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

History of Anatomy Laws in Illinois 401suspicion, and made urgent the disposal of the body. The dentist, wishingto examine the teeth further, decapitated it and then at night transportedthe corpse in his spring-wagon to the Rock River where it was dumpedfrom a bridge. Several days later the headless and much mutilated bodywas found washed ashore at Grand Detour. The 'crime' was never solvedby the county authorities, and the perpetrators chuckled. To this day, theskull, sphinxlike, graces the inner sanctum of the dentist's successor's office.Not only in Illinois, but in other states of the Union witnesses are still tobe found who have first hand knowledge of 'body-snatching' for Anatomywhich occurred here and there at the turn of the century. A doctor, knownto the writer, vouched for the information that his teacher had participatedin such a grave-robbing in New York as late as 1898. Waite, too,presentsevidence of sporadic incidents of this kind in the 'nineties.' But by theend of the 19th century most states had enacted more or less satisfactory"Anatomy Laws," canceling the need of grave-robbing and thus bringingto a close this most lurid chapter in medical history.If the public mind has associated "grave-robbing" only with the medicalprofession, it had overlooked that in many instances during the centuriessuch desecration sprang from entirely different motives. That thievesemptied the royal tombs of Ancient Egypt because of the treasures buriedwith the Pharaohs, or that, in more modern times, bodies of prominentpersons were stolen from their sepulchres and were held for ransom hardlyneeds mention. The incident is well known how on the night of November7, 1876, criminals almost succeeded in stealing Abraham Lincoln'sremains from the sarcophagus in the catacomb room at the base of thethen unfinished monument at Springfield; how secret service men anddetectives, who heard rumors of the plot beforehand and consequently werein hiding nearby, foiled them.Exactly two years later the body of Alexander T. Stewart, the merchantwhose great store in New York became Wanamaker's, and whose fortunewas worth $30,000,000 when he died, was stolen from the churchyard ofSt. Mark's in the Bouwerie. The ghoul wanted $200,000, the same sum thatwas to be paid for the return of Lincoln's body. After prolonged negotiations,he finally accepted an offer of $20,000. After further bargaining amasked man on horseback met a relative of the Stewart family in a remotespot in Westchester County at 3 o'clock in the morning and escorted himto a buggy occupied by another masked man. The latter presented asidentifying evidence the exact piece of velvet from Stewart's coffin thathad served in the original ransom note. He counted the contents of the bagof ransom money and "then turned over to the relative a canvas sack containingthe remains of Alexander T. Stewart." 42^Charles Collins, in Chicago Sunday Tribune, March 22, 1953.