A letter to the public on the necessity of anatomical pursuits : with reference to popular prejudices, and to the principles on which legislative interference in these matters ought to proceed / Corden Thompson.

Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the public on the necessity of anatomical pursuits : with reference to popular prejudices, and to the principles on which legislative interference in these matters ought to proceed / Corden Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of the Romans on this subject, and nothing could exceed their scrupulous attention to the rites of burial. In the estimation of these nations a dead body polluted every thing in its neighbourhood, even the air proceeding from it pos- sessed the same contaminating properties — nay the mere sight of a corpse was enough to defile a person. Moreover, for the body to be deprived of its Jlesh was deemed of all ills the most grievous; and in the eye of a Roman it was violated by the act of handling. Even such as were merely present at the funeral of a deceased person must be three times sprinkled with pure or lustral water in order to free them from pollution.* Since both Greeks and Romans believed that the souls of unburied bodies were not admit- ted into the abodes of the dead, or at least that they were doomed to wander 100 years previously on the borders of the river Styx ;f we cannot wonder at the attention which they paid to funeral rites, nor at the reverential feelings with which they looked upon the corpse itself. It is perfectly clear, that under the existence of these superstitious prejudices, medicine, based as it is on anatomy, could never march with other branches of knowledge. In fact, conformable to this state of things, we observe that * Virgilii JEneid, lib. vi.,—1>. 229. f Thus the Sybil to iEneas:— Haec omnis, quam cernis inops inhumataque turba est; Portitor ille, Charon : hi, quos vehit unda, septtke. Nec ripas datur horrendas, nec rauca fluenta Transportare prius quam sedibus ossa quierunt, Centum errant annos, volitantque haec litora circum. Virgilii iEneidos, lib. vi.—v. 325. Hence the urgency with which the unfortunate Palinurus, who had been drowned, requests iEneas to throw a little earth upon his body ; Per genitorem oro, per spem surgentis Iuli, Eripe me his, invicte, malis ; aut tu mihi terrain Injice. Ibid v. 364. The most fearful death, in short, to the ancients was by shipwreck; and the most horrid imprecation to wish any one might die without burial.
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