THE HORRORS OF THE DISSECTING ROOM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2471, 12 May 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE HORRORS OF THE DISSECTING ROOM.

« We published the other day a letter from " A Medical" deploring the dearth in the dissecting room, owing to the disinclination amongst the poor to die in

the workhouse. Tho following statement, which is broadly true of a good many more hospitals than the ono our correspondent vouchcs for, will hardly, we fear, do much to remove the dearth, unless, indeed, the publication of the scandal induces the hospital authorities to preserve some little decency in tho use they make of pauper corpses :—

" Tho public," writes thin correspondeut, "is blissfully ignorant of the treatment pauper bodies really receivo in the dissecting rooms. The Ant of Parliament, which provides that nobody be mutilated beyond a certain inevitable extent is systematically ignored and broken. The following is an outline of the system pursued in at least one great London hospital, and perhaps in many. A body is received (paupers who die and whoso bodies are unclaimed by friends are all sent to hospitals), and a sum—as much as £5 in some cases—allowed for it. All particulars relating 1 to the body are then entered into a book, and an identifying number put upon the corpse, which is theu put in pickle until required. This may be in a week, a month, a year, according to the demand. When a call is made for a body, it is fished out of piokle and taken to the dissecting room. Here it is apportioned among the various applyiyg students, at certain iixed price--for different parts. One wants a forearm. another a foot, hand, etc. The whole body is sold in this way, the parts being dissected off as required. Each student has a locker in which ho keeps his portion, a heavy penalty attaching to removing any piece of human fle.-h from the precincts of the hospital. During the cutting up of the body and subsequent dissection of its parts a good mapy pieces are thrown upon the floor of the room. A porter is omployod who goes round at intervals with a brush and pan collecting these morsels, which aro removed to a cellar. In duo tirce follow all the other pieces of flesh, bones, etc, These are all thrown into one heap in the cellar. It must be understood that perhaps half-a-dozen bodies are ' goiug ' at one time in the dissecting room, and this heap is composed of fragments of all. In the cellar is a pair ol : scales, nnd some ordinary ' shell' coffins. When not occupied in sweeping up the bits, tho porter is engaged in weighing up theso unsavory morsels into a certain quantity which is supposed to equal the body. With this mass tho coffin is filled aud

screwed down. When burying- day coines —perhaps 10 or 12 cofiius full—round comes the hearse, and off goes the 1 pieces'—men, women, and children, all mixed up together in glorious confusion — the cemetery. Here the whole harriblo business concludes with the Church of England burial services ! The Collins are flimsy affairs, and one wonder* what would happen if one broke at tho grave-side, tho clergyman Raw, say, two mutilated heads, half a donou feet, and three legs, with a gory mass of scraps roll out ! But it's only a pauper whom nobody owns,' and, says Medical, ' What, deference, may I ask, can it make to a man, whatever use is made of liis body after death Pall Mall Budgot.