Introductory address, and catalogue of students attending the annual course of lectures on anatomy and surgery / delivered by F. H. Hamilton.

  • Hamilton, Frank Hastings, 1813-1886.
Date:
January, 1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory address, and catalogue of students attending the annual course of lectures on anatomy and surgery / delivered by F. H. Hamilton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    is legalized by a statute which bears marks of the barbarism of cen- turies back; under which the purchase of a $10 patent affords protection and full licence to practice. Such are the diplomas by virtue of which, hordes of rum-seller, red-pepper and steam-doctors are practising among us. They murder boldly and with impunity, and laugh while in their drunken revel they recite their infernal tricks and impositions, practised upon a blinded and too credulous commu- nity. And if law cannot, or dare not interfere, we hope at least they may feel the torments of a guilty conscience, and that the restless spirits of the thousands they have sent to an untimely grave may never cease to haunt them ; at noon-day may their curses follow them ; at dim twilight may their shadowy forms move around them and flit athwart their path ; and in the darkness of the midnight hour, amid the loud merriment of the bacchanalian revel, when, like Mac- beth's witches, they celebrate their fiendish exploits ; may deep groans echo to their songs, and hollow moanings give dismal response to their laughter; may cold blood ooze from the very walls and stand in purple drops ; a horrid testimony of murderous deeds. There is yet another point of view in which the study of anatomy is to the medical man highly important and interesting. Every now and then we are called upon to examine the bodies of those whose sudden and mysterious decease, has led to a suspicion of guilt: and it becomes our responsible duty to decide whether any suspicious ap- pearances can be detected upon the body or within the viscera—and such is the confidence attached to medical testimony, that the life and reputation of the accused will often depend upon our evidence alone. Such dissections, however, are usually made in so slovenly and care- less a manner, and so little is known by the dissector of what are lesious and what healthy structure—what normal and what ab- normal, that very slight dependence ought to be placed upon his tes- timony. To the same cause may be attributed the singular discrep- ancies in the statements of physicians as to pathological facts in medico-legal investigations, and which has often caused their evi- dence to be entirely set aside. The recent trial of Morrisfor an un lawful procurement of abortion is fully illustrative of this fact. The Honorable Judge in his concise and masterly charge] to the jury, stated that he much regretted that on a subject of sojnuch inter*'