Mr. Warburton's anatomy bill : thoughts on its mischievous tendency : with suggestions for an entirely new one, founded upon an available anti-septic process, in an appeal to medical practitioners, students of anatomy, and the public at large, on the injury to medical science and the hinderances to the decent interment of unclaimed pauper bodies now delivered up for anatomical "examination," consequent upon the rejection of such a process / by William Roberts.

  • Roberts, W. (William)
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. Warburton's anatomy bill : thoughts on its mischievous tendency : with suggestions for an entirely new one, founded upon an available anti-septic process, in an appeal to medical practitioners, students of anatomy, and the public at large, on the injury to medical science and the hinderances to the decent interment of unclaimed pauper bodies now delivered up for anatomical "examination," consequent upon the rejection of such a process / by William Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    should be appointed to see that on the part of Parish Boards, Masters of Workhouses, Teachers, Students, Undertakers, and Clergy, every thing was done correctly. Each Inspector was to have a district to superintend; and it was to be the duty of the Secretary of State to direct ^^in what manner ^^ each Inspector should ^^ transact the duties of his office/^ Thus was assurance made doubly sure; and a system which, from first to last, has been one of the grossest deception, was made to appear to the unsuspecting pubhc, aU that could be desired. The Inspector ha^ uniformly taken care never to be where his presence was most wanted, and as to ^'^ inspecting ^^ the contents of a single coffin, or shell, before its last removal, for the purpose of seeing that the body, about which the framers of the Bill affected to be so solicitous, was really there for interment, such an idea never once entered his head; though assuming (which we beheve would be about the mark) that his salary exceeded £800 per annum, and the number of bodies at his disposal averaged 600, he must have been in the receipt of not less than £\ 6s. 8d. for each and every body nominally interred. The plan of appointing '^*^ Inspectors ^^ had not only the effect of deceiving the public, by giving a notion of certainty and security in reference to the burial clauses of the Bill, for which there was no real foundation; but its operation was to give to parties chosen by the friends, and some of them the actual Shareholders, of a particular School of Anatomy, the power of crippling and crushing all the private Anatomical Schools. For that purpose, we hesitate not to say, the office of Inspector has been used. By withholding from those es- tablishments their fair proportion of subjects at the beginning of a season, by sending them subjects at inconvenient times (on the eve, for instance, of the Christmas vacation, when both private and public schools have their holidays), and by other means, most of the private schools have been closed.