ANATOMY BILL. (Hansard, 6 February 1832)

Mr. Warburton
presented a Petition from the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, in favour of the Anatomy Bill. He would take that opportunity of correcting a mis-statement which had been made on a former evening by the hon. member for Preston, respecting the celebrated surgeon, John Hunter. That hon. Member said, that Mr. Hunter had the weakness to request, on his death bed, that his body should not be dissected. But the fact was, that he not only made no such request, but, on the contrary, expressly directed that his body should be dissected, and that certain parts should be prepared and deposited in the museum of the college.

Mr. O'Connell
believed, that if some means were not taken to enable the Schools of Anatomy in Great Britain and Ireland to obtain subjects legally, surgical pupils would be obliged to go from these countries to prosecute their studies in France, where bodies could be procured for a few francs. He had been informed that three bodies, exhumed from a church-yard in Dublin, and exported to this country, yielded a profit of thirty-eight pounds, clear of all expenses. This was a sum so large as to hold out strong temptations to that profligate class of wretches, whose crimes had recently excited such horror in the public mind.

§ Mr. Hunt
referred to some wax preparations of the human body that had been lately exhibited in London, and stated, that he was informed, that they might to a great extent, serve for the purpose of teaching anatomy. So much was that the case, that, in the College of Surgeons in Dublin, the professors had for several years lectured on artificial bodies. The same thing, he understood, had been for a long time done in Paris; and why should not the same be 1277 done here? He was informed that pupils, by the assistance of these ingenious models, were enabled by the dissection of one or two bodies, to acquire so much knowledge of the science as to require no further instruction. The imitations were so complete, that the most experienced eye could not detect the difference between the model and the real skeleton. It was a disgrace to the medical men of the metropolis, that they had not followed the example of their brethren in Dublin and Paris, but required human carcasses to be sold like pigs or sheep.

§ Mr. Crampton
considered that the Bill introduced by the hon. member for Bridport was calculated to put an end to the horrid system of murder which had lately been resorted to for the supply of the schools. What the hon. member for Preston said respecting the means by which anatomy was studied in Dublin might, perhaps, be true of some college, in some other part of the world, but was certainly not true as to the College of Surgeons in that city. There were, in fact, at that moment, in London, three members of that College, who had come over here for the purpose of obtaining for Ireland a bill for regulating the Schools of Anatomy, similar to the English bill now in progress through the House. Those gentlemen believed that such a bill was necessary to prevent the schools in Dublin from being abandoned.

Mr. Sheil
said, that the hon. member for Preston was right in stating that models in wax were made use of by the College of Surgeons in Dublin, in the teaching of Anatomy. But he was entirely mistaken in supposing that those models were a modern invention. In fact, they were used many years ago in Florence, where they were invented. But no surgeon ever imagined that the study of models, however perfect, could supersede the necessity of actual dissection. So much were bodies in demand in Dublin, that he could inform the hon. Member 20l. was given for one though formerly it might be had for 20s.

§ Mr. Robinson
had no doubt that the practice of dissection was indispensable to the education of a surgeon; but he had great doubts that the bill of the hon. member for Bridport would be sufficient to remove the temptation to murder, the removal of which was one of its avowed objects.

Sir Robert Inglis
thought that no time should be lost in passing a bill on the subject; although he could not say, that he approved of all the provisions of the Bill 1278 which had lately been introduced by the hon. Gentleman opposite.

Mr. Warburton
did not believe that any experienced surgeon would say, that the most perfect of the models alluded to by the hon. member for Preston could supersede dissection. On the contrary, the ingenious foreigner who had invented the latest improvements in those models expressly stated in his pamphlet that they would serve as highly useful maps to guide the student in dissection.

§ Mr. Shaw
concurred in what had fallen from other hon. Gentlemen respecting the necessity of a bill for Ireland similar to the Anatomy Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Bridport.

§ Mr. Stephenson
thought that the sale of dead bodies ought to be prohibited altogether, and that there would be no more difficulty in obtaining a supply for the schools in this country than in France and Germany, where the schools were all supplied from the hospitals and prisons.

§ Mr. Ruthven
hoped that the bill would be rendered unobjectionable, but, to make it so, it must not go forth to the public that a law was about to be passed under the provisions of which parents could legally sell the bodies of their children, or children those of their parents: such a proceeding in legislation would excite disgust in the public mind.

§ Mr. Hunt
did not say, that artificial subjects would do away with the necessity of dissection, but that they would diminish the necessity for so many bodies.

Mr. O'Connell
said, that the schools in Dublin had risen to their present eminence by the facilities which heretofore existed for obtaining subjects.