File:Interstate medical journal (1907) (14576688599).jpg

Identifier: interstatemedica1419unse (find matches)
Title: Interstate medical journal
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Medicine
Publisher: St. Louis, : Interstate Medical Journal
Contributing Library: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia Historical Medical Library
Digitizing Sponsor: The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the National Endowment for the Humanities

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ecompo-sition set in rendering them useless for anatomical purposes, and thenburied. The graveyard walls were sometimes built of loose stones so asto make scaling almost an impossibility, and many a lodge was erectedat a churchyard gate as a watch-tower, which would never have beenplaced there as an ornament. The manner in which a body was lifted was to clear away the earthfrom the head of the coffin, and by means of a strong crowbar, madefor the purpose, force it between the body in the coffin and the lid, which 302 FRAXK. was pressed up by lever power. The weight of the earth generallycaused the lid to snap at about one-third its length. Whenever this hap-pened, the body was drawn out. The nature of the narrow bed wasevaded by rounding the shoulders well over the chest, and in drawingout the body gave it a turn so as to extract it by the diagonal openingalready made. The greatest care was exercised to rearrange every-thing above the grave, and every detail was carefully noted by the
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Fig. 5.—Alexander Monro to whom the body of William Burke was delivered bythe court of high justiciary and by him publicly dissected and anatomized. resurrection-man, the slightest alteration in a plant or an oyster-shellbeing enough to tell the practiced eye of desecration. An idea of the amount of money that could be made in body-traffick-ing can be judged from the testimony given by a body-snatcher beforethe Anatomy Committee of the House of Parliament. A gang of six orseven disposed of 312 bodies during the regular dissecting session. Theaverage price of an adult body was £4, 4s., thus reaping an income of1,328 guineas, or about $6,000.00, nearly a thousand dollars apiece. 1RESURRECTION DAYS. 803 This was exclusive of the teeth, which were generally sold to dentists,and in which these men did a large trade, and when not working bodies,the resurrection-men were engaged in stealing teeth from woundedmen on stricken fields, and haunted the battlefields of the Peninsula, add-ing st

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