1828.]

On the Supply of Bodies for Dissection.

it is proposed that they should each agree to leave their own bodies for dissection as an example, before they inflicted so great a violation of old established prejudices on the poor, unless Surgeons can prove that human feelings, and the frailties of our nature, keep pace with the scale of property, and that to have a decent respect for the mortal remains of our nearest relations, for whose souls we are commanded continually to pray, we must have a certain income and rank in society. The poor are helpless, and on the malign principle of taking advantage of the forlorn condition of our fellow creatures, the principle of the contemplated measure for procuring subjects is a sound one. But on the principle on which all our HOSPITALS are founded, whose histories, nay whose very titles, dedicated to St. Bartholomew, St. Thomas, and other holy persons, shew their object to be Christian charity to the poor, and not lucre of gain to the Anatomical lecturer, the principle is as barefaced a defiance of the Christian object of their benevolent Catholic founders as any we ever heard of, and forms a humiliating contrast to those pious institutions on the Continent, which under the care of the "Sœurs de la Charité," and the many hospitaliers of the religious orders, still retain the spirit and practice, as well as the names of their founders.

The poor, if any thing, feel more strongly on the subject of the dead bodies of their friends than the rich, and we fear the having recourse to the seizure of their bodies in preference, does not arise from the sense entertained of their ignorance or bluntness of feeling, but from their being helpless, and therefore more easily within the grasp of cupidity. In Ireland, in Spain, in Belgium, or in Austria, such a plan would cause a rebellion; and are we, in this boasted age of cant, and in a country vaunted for charity, to make inroads on the better feelings of the indigent (at all times the most pious of mankind), merely because, with all our schools and improvements, the mass of English poor are still too stupid, or too ignorant of what their beuters are about, to detect the stratagems of the house surgeon of an hospital, or the cunning of the artifices of the dissecting room. As an advocate for the purity of the medical character, I trust that we shall be spared this

205

blot, and that if we follow France in this particular, it will be strictly and closely, that is, taking ALL unclaimed bodies whatever, in which case, and with due care that friends shall always be consulted if possible, the plan would be unobjectionable.

But bad as is this abuse, arising from the pressure of an overloaded market of medical teachers, there is another which is still more to be lamented, which is the manner in which the profession at large, but particularly the Physician, is paid. That Physicians of the old school too often prolong a case of difficulty from ignorance, and that Surgeons, from ignorance and the love of experiment combined, often make serious mistakes in operation, to the unnecessary loss of life or limbs, is notorious; but the Oriental nations go further, and charge us Europeans with acting on an interested principle of prolonging diseases, while we contrive to extort fees from the nervous goodnature of imaginary valetudinarians. I would propose, therefore, to exonerate medical men from this odious imputation altogether, and to give our concurrence to the mode of payment alluded to in the following paragraph, from an Oriental paper, which I recommend to the consideration of the reader.

"The Chinese have long been celebrated for their sagacity, and the acuteness with which they see into the bearings of particular customs and laws. They show this sagacity in no one thing more strongly than in the manner in which physicians are paid in China. Instead of being paid by fees when persons are ill, which the Chinese would regard as holding out inducements to them to make a job of the case, each family in China pays to some physician an annual sum, a portion of which pay is suspended whenever any of the family are ill, and this suspension of pay is continued till health be restored, or death ensue, in which latter case a forfeiture is paid by the doctor in the minus ratio of the age of the patient. By this means Chinese physicians acquire a vital interest in hastening the cure.

"The Chinese frequently remark that, bywhat they learn from Europeans, physic in England is a dangerous traffic, in which the prolongation of an illness becomes so closely connected with the interest of the physician, that it re

206

Chinese Physicians.-Bodies for Dissection.

quires more than an ordinary degree of moral fortitude to resist the temptation to effect it. Besides which, there is another great evil resulting from the trade of physic in Europe, that it makes physicians jealous of the medical knowledge of the public; and hence it is that mercenary European practitioners usually forbid their patients the use of books of Domestic Medicine, for the two-fold reason that the knowledge of popular remedies would injure their practice, while a little insight into the real simplicity of medicine, would furnish the discerning public with a clue to the scandalous humbug of empyrical monopoly. If European doctors were not proverbially on bad terms with each other, this craft would be able to establish a tremendous tax upon health; but, fortunately, the pretensions of one jealous monopolist are often founded on the real or alleged bad practice of his competitor. And hence, if a sick man were to consult fifty physicians in London, one after another, he would find his constitution consigned to the ruthless operation of nearly fifty different and counteracting panaceas! In China, medical men have as much interest in enlightening the public mind on the subject of physic, as they have to keep it in ignorance in Europe. Practice is certainly improving in England; but as long as the system of calling, uncalled for, for a second, third, or fourth fee, continues, so long will medicine be a trade dangerous to the sufferer, in direct proportion as it is useful to the physician. The apothecary, too, has an interest in keeping the physician up to his drug trade, and any inroads on the score of simplicity in medicine, would make him a dangerous rival to the doctor. This state of things cannot exist in China. There the physician really assists nature: in England, nature has art and imposture to struggle with; and the remarkable cures made by medicines so opposite in their known effects in England, can only be ascribed to the overbearing power of this our kindest mother to subdue disease in time, of herself, and often aided by fortunate changes of the weather, to persevere in her curative nisus, till the animal machine be restored to health, in spite of the evil influence of half a hundred prescribed sources of irrita

tion."

Mr. URBAN,

THE

[Sept. Sept. 12.

HE Committee on Anatomy having, in their late Report to the House of Commons, mentioned that most of the witnesses wish for an enactment for the delivery of bodies (under certain circumstances) of perhouses, &c. I request the insertion of the following extract from Mr. Abernethy's Hunterian Oration, 1819:

sons to be dissected who die in work

"In England, however, the indigent who suffer from illness and injury are supported and relieved chiefly by the liberality of that benevolence which is so creditable to our national character, and much as I wish for the promotion of medical knowledge, I should be sorry if the bodies of the poor were to be considered as public property without reserve in our own country. For better would it seem to me that medical science should cease, and our bodily sufferings continue, than that the natural rights and best feelings of humanity should not be equally respected in all classes of society, or that merely because persons are poor, they should be prevented from paying the last tribute of respect and regard to their departed relatives by attending their remains to the grave; yet if the directors of hospitablish it as a regulation that the body of tals, poor-houses, and prisons, were to esclaimable by immediate relatives, should be any person dying in those institutions, ungiven to the surgeon of the establishment for dissection, upon his signing an obligation so to dispose of it, or to give no offence to decency or humanity, I am convinced that it would greatly tend to the increase of anatomical knowledge amongst the members of our profession in general, and consequently to the public good. Or indeed it might be established as a law, that the body of any person, of whatsoever rank or fortune, unclaimable by immediate relatives, should be subjected to dissection, and thus a great public good might be obtained without any infringement on the equality of right."

I have marked some words to be printed in Italics, which I think require explanation. What does “unclaimable by immediate relatives" mean? Does it mean such bodies as are never likely to be claimed by immediate relatives? I cannot but consider that an Act of Parliament for the purpose mentioned by the Committee would be very objectionable, as it would add to the sufferings of those unfortunate persons who from poverty become inmates of work houses and hospitals; I mean from an apprehension, that if they should, die in those

On the Eclipse mentioned by Herodotus.

places, they will not be buried in the
usual way, but their bodies will be
anatomized. Mr. Abernethy's plan is
also objectionable, as that would no
doubt cause much distress.
Yours, &c.

The true time of New Moon is found by the tables to be B. C. 625, Feb. 2, at about 17 h. 12 in.; or Feb. 3 d. 5 h. 12 m. (morning); and to this, according to Volney's representations, and as astronomical facts indicate, a difference is to be assigned for the bypothesis of an acceleration in "the nodus of the Moon." Mr. Tovey, quoting from Woodhouse's Astronomy,

208

On the Eclipse mentioned by Herodotus.

ing (ibid. p. 671), "The Sun's longitude (for a particular eclipse) being known, the Moon's (which at the time of greatest obscuration in a solar eclipse, must be the same) is known also. The Moon's longitude, however, computed for the time of the eclipse, and by means of the Lunar Tables, does not agree with the former. In some part or other, then, the Tables are defective, or, without some modification, are not applicable to ages that are past." The inequality herein indicated is denominated "a secular inequality, requiring for its correction a secular equation." It is apparent, then, that either the hypothesis of the acceleration of the Moon's mean motion must be true, or that the Tables are defective; as is remarked by Volney, "That the theory of the modern schools of Europe is not founded on a sufficient series of positive observations; and that for want of this important element (which the ancient priests of Chaldea and Egypt enjoyed, on account of their sky always clear, and an hereditary transmission), modern astronomers, to compose their lunar tables, have employed certain observations mentioned by Ptolemy and the Arabians, the accuracy of which is hypothetic and contestible; and that, to conform to these observations, the hypothesis of acceleration has been resorted to, &c. &c.

The computation of this eclipse of B. C. 625, is, however, quoted by M. Volney from "the tables which the astronomer Pingré drew up of the ten centuries that precede the Christian æra, for the Academy of Inscriptions (Memoire de l'Academie des Inscriptions, vol. XLII.) year 625, 3d of February, at half-past five in the morning, a central eclipse, visible to the east of Europe, of Africa, and to (all) Asia, reckoning from the forty-second_degree of longitude east from Paris. This certainly is our eclipse, from this year 625 B. C. has, preferably to any other, the merit of agreeing perfectly with the various circumstances of the accounts of Herodotus and Jeremiah. It is true that the hour assigned by the French astronomer is too early, since the Sun could scarcely have risen in the necessary latitude and longitude;" but M. Pingré remarks (in the Art of

*The difference in time for the longitude is here required to be added.

[Sept.

verifying Dates, vol. I.) “that the calculations of astronomers, according as they advance in antiquity, become less exact, and are liable to errors of even a considerable portion of time," &c. As already stated, then, we have with the requisite corrections the time of greatest obscuration indicated at about ten o'clock in the morning.

To adjust the differences respecting the year B. C. 625, or B. C. 626, it may be further remarked (Volney's New Researches on Ancient History, vol. I.) that, in calculating after the manner of chronologers, a year too much is reckoned, because in true calculation, according to the astronomers, the first year before Christ, and the first year of Christ, require that this latter year should be reckoned as nought;" which therefore reduces the year 626, in true calculation, to the year 625. This is clearly indicated by Mr. Tovey, as he says, by the year 626 B. C. I understand the 626th year before the first of the Christian æra;" therefore, deducting for the year of Christ, which should be reckoned as nought, we have the year 625, as already mentioned. The same analogy is found to exist with respect to the year 585, the date of what is termed Sir Isaac Newton's eclipse. It is stated in a note in Ferguson's Astronomy, respecting this eclipse, that instead of its being referred to the fourth year of the 48th Olympiad (585=584), that as the Olympiads commenced at the summer solstice, it was therefore only in the end of the 3d year it happened (May 28); the 3d year of the 48th Olympiad, commencing at the solstice of the year 586=585. The eclipse of 628 is also to be referred to the 3d year of 38th Olympiad (although denominated the 4th year), commencing at the solstice of the year 626-625 the 4th year of the 38th Olympiad commencing at the solstice after the eclipse. We have therefore for correct data the 3d year of the 38th Olympiad 626-625, and the 3d year of the 48th Olympiad, 586-585, each, however, named the 4th year, and the difference being precisely ten Olympiads, or forty years. Mr. Tovey's inference is therefore clearly incorrect; that the difference of the dates is not forty, but fortyone years and hence Mr. Tovey says, "M. Volney's ingenious conjecture to account for the forty years will not apply."

;