St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student. Edward Berdoe

is it that the schools have never scrupled to obtain subjects for dissection when popular prejudice stinted the supply, by foul means when fair did not avail. No questions were asked in the old days, before the passing of the Anatomy Act, how the “subject” was procured; enough that it was on the table for the uses of science. Whether murder had brought it there, or the visitation of the graveyard by the body-snatcher, nobody concerned in teaching or learning anatomy cared a jot.

      In one famous school there was a private trap through which the corpse was pushed into the porter’s room, he passing the money out to the persons who delivered the body, and holding no communication with the body-snatcher, or even seeing his face. Things, however, are different now, and the workhouses are permitted to send the bodies of friendless and unclaimed paupers, whom nobody owns or cares to bury, for the purposes of dissection.

      Dissection and the making of a post-mortem examination, though often confounded in the public mind, differ materially. Dissection consists in minutely tracing out all the important structures of the limbs, body, and vital organs, and thus it takes several weeks’ hard work to get through a whole subject; while a post-mortem examination is the labour of an hour or two, and consists in examining and noting the pathological conditions of the internal organs, with a view merely to discovering the cause of death. An adult subject is worth about £5 when properly prepared for research. Each arm and leg, the half of the head, the chest, and the rest of the trunk, was charged to the student requiring it at St. Bernard’s, 12s. 6d., and he was expected to make good use of his opportunity. Every portion removed by his scalpel was carefully gathered up by a porter, and every night and morning placed in a coffin in the vaults below. When a coffin is filled with this minutely divided humanity, it is sent to a cemetery and buried as “our brethren and sisters departed.” The provisions of the Anatomy Act forbid the taking of any portion of the subjects out of the schools; nevertheless more than one ardent student whom we see in the room will finish his work on the hand or the foot at his own lodgings, to the horror and disgust of his landlady if she catches him at it.

      Some men never make good dissectors; they can cram up what they want for their examinations without the infinite pains required for a beautiful “preparation” such as is being made at this table on our right for the college museum. It is an arm, and every muscle stands out clean and clear, every artery is seen with its vermilion wax injection running its sharply defined course, and anastomosing with its neighbouring vessels. Here are the nerves like silver threads, becoming, like the blood supply, smaller as they reach the fingers, till they are lost in their terminations at the tips. It requires a man with a special genius, and the gift of an infinite capacity for taking pains, to do work like this, and many take a pride in doing it.

      Round this table on the left is a group of junior students, listening to the demonstrator, who is lecturing on the muscles of the chest, or thorax as it is called, and asking each of his auditors in turn some question to test his knowledge, and explain his difficulties if he have any.

      The coloured diagrams round the walls, and the illustrations in the text-books used, serve to complete our acquaintance with the matter in hand, and its daily repetition fixes it in the memory. The men do their work in great linen blouses or aprons with sleeves. Most of them smoke, and the dissecting-room certainly is one place from which the most violent anti-tobacco agitator would hardly wish to banish it, if he knew how it mitigates its awful odours. When the morning is over, and the men have taken their lunch (they eat sandwiches at their work without the least fastidiousness), few of them return for any more work in that place unless they chance to be very industrious. There are some few men who, in their first and second year, dissect on every available opportunity; for anatomy cannot be crammed, and can only be mastered by this persistent business of the scalpel. Occasionally a visitor will drop in to look round at the work going on; some general practitioner who has been at the school in his early days, to refresh his memory on some point, or to rekindle for a few moments the lost enthusiasm in such studies. Often they tell good stories of the difficulties they had in the olden time of procuring bodies. One old fellow who had been a demonstrator in that room, told one day how, on one occasion some fifty years before, he had been urging the beadle to provide more subjects.

      “Can’t get you a fresh ’un before this day week, sir,” replied the man. “You see, sir, it is my mother-in-law. She only died last night. She will be buried on Thursday. We’ll have her up the same night, and she’ll be ready next morning for you.”

      And then he related how the body-snatchers went to Bow Cemetery, then almost out in the country, and “resurrected” the poor woman, stripped her of her shroud (to take which was felony), put her in a light cart, and drove off with her. On either side of the Bow road at that time were fields; it was very dark and lonely. When half-way towards their destination they feared they were closely pursued, and to avoid a capture they cast the body out into the ditch, and made off with all haste. Next morning there was a report of a horrible murder. An inquest followed, and an open verdict was returned, name and cause of death unknown.

      Close by the hospital there dwelt an aged man with his daughter in genteel poverty, a learned and serious person, who seemed to have known better days. His conversation was charming, and his society was much sought after, but seldom accorded. He kept himself apart from his neighbours, and held no more intercourse with them than was necessary for the amenities of life. But he was on good terms with the St. Bernard’s staff, often strolled through the dissecting-room and the museum, and was generally present in the operating theatre when anything of special interest was “on the table.”

      There was considerable mystery about this man, Dr. Robert Day by name; but the hospital people knew his antecedents, and thought much the more of him on account of them. Indeed, most medical folk considered him a hero and a martyr of science, though nobody took the least trouble to help him in any more substantial way. Many years ago Dr. Robert Day had been professor of anatomy at a great school of medicine. He was an author of celebrity, and his works were text books in the hands of all the students. He had been implicated in the Burke and Hare scandal, had been proved to have availed himself of the services of these murderers to procure him subjects for dissection at his school of anatomy. The murderers having been detected in their horrible business, and having met their fate, the attention of the populace was forcibly directed to Dr. Robert Day and his dealings with the criminals. Had he been caught when the attack was made on his residence, he would have speedily been lynched. As it was, his house was wrecked, his furniture destroyed, his costly library set on fire, and he had to fly the town to escape personal violence. He was long in hiding, a ruined man, subsisting as a medical coach under an assumed name, till after some years, when the storm had passed over, and the new Anatomy Act had set the popular mind at rest, he was able to declare himself amongst his professional brethren, but they were always shy of him, and, though in private they let him see they thought none the worse of him for his complicity in “subject” getting, it was impossible to put him forward, or do him any very material service. They could not be hard on him. They had all profited by his research; all had learned their anatomy more or less from his books. It was little to them how he came by his knowledge. His more fortunate brethren in the kindred sciences now do not scruple to use methods to obtain their objects which, if fully laid bare to the inspection of the lay and ignorant public, would perhaps be considered only slightly less objectionable. But then the lay public is so unreasonable. They demand to be cured instantly of all the ailments that afflict them, and object to give up their mothers, their children, or their friends, and indeed even their cats and dogs, on whose living bodies the necessary experiments can be duly tried. This is naturally irritating to the scientific mind; it feels it is expected to make bricks without straw; and the straw, in the shape of clinical and physiological material, must be had somehow, so they protest.

      CHAPTER III.

      IN STUDENTS’ LODGINGS

      Heroes mischievously gay,

      Lords of the street, and terrors of the way,

      Flush’d as they are with folly, youth, and wine.

– Johnson.

      Throw physic to the dogs! A pipe – cheroot —

      Pilot – and life-preserver —voila