Address to the community, on the necessity of legalizing the study of anatomy / by order of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

  • Massachusetts Medical Society.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the community, on the necessity of legalizing the study of anatomy / by order of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the community, from a pretended respect to the decaying remains of such as these ? These insulated and unhappy beings should re¬ ceive from us, during life, the relief and protection their destitute circumstances require. But when their lives are ended, and their bodies insensible to pain, they are the proper subjects to be devoted to the benefit of mankind. Not that their bodies are to be so used as a punishment, because they are out¬ casts from society by their crimes or misfortunes :— dissection is not to be made a part of the expiatory penalty of crimes :—it is not to be regarded as a 'punishment, but as an operation on the dead for the benefit of the living ; and on this very account, those laws which permit the Judge to annex dissec¬ tion to the punishment of death, operate injuriously to science, and rather tend to keep up a horror of Anatomy. But the unclaimed bodies of all persons who die in the prisons, and different eleemosynary institutions of the country, are the proper subjects of Anatomy,—simply because the feelings of no liv¬ ing being can be violated by their dissection ;—and as for the dead, all will allow, that it is compara¬ tively of little consequence in which of the various modes adopted by the customs and caprice of man¬ kind, our parent earth receives our bodies. “ If we coolly reflect for one moment, we must admit, that employing the body in the communication of useful knowledge, and preserving the parts with care and respect, for the purpose of transmitting this knowledge to posterity, ought to be more agreeable to every body’s feelings than casting the body into the water, broiling it on the fire, exposing