Joseph Nash McDowell (1805-1868) was one of the most influential and respected doctors west of the Mississippi in the 1840s until his death in 1868. He is primarily remembered for his grave-digging practices, where he illegally exhumed corpses in order to study human anatomy. He is also known for his influence on Mark Twain, and was likely the inspiration for Twain's fictional character Dr. Robinson in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." [1]
Dr. McDowell moved to St. Louis in 1839 with a reputation that preceded him. He had previously worked in Kentucky, Philadelphia and Ohio at various medical facilities, and studied at Transylvania University in Kentucky. [2] After McDowell's death, it became affiliated with the Washington University School of Medicine in 1899. [3] [4]
In the 1840s, using cadavers to study human anatomy was a highly uncommon, and frowned upon, practice in the United States. [1] Prior to the Civil War, only 5 states allowed the dissection of non-felons for medical and educational purposes. Three of these laws were soon repealed, leaving the practice legal in only New York and Massachusetts. [3] Dissecting cadavers was crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of human anatomy and to enhance and develop more accurate medical practices; however, the public was wary of the idea, believing it to be a desecration of the dead. In large part, this feeling was due to religious reasons; Christianity, for example, calls for burial of the dead. Exhuming the dead was not only disrespectful but could also be considered sacrilegious; it was believed a body needed to be intact to enter Heaven.[ citation needed ]
Dr. McDowell believed the practice to be necessary in order to advance medicine and his own personal understanding of the human body. During his time teaching at the medical school, he not only encouraged but also required that his students perform at least one human dissection before their graduation. [3] This illegal practice served as a form of bonding for the students; with the practice being strictly taboo to most of society they had only each other with which to discuss what they had done and how it impacted their education. [3]
There had been 'anatomy riots' across America in the 1840s: a public, outraged by allegations of body-snatching, angrily targeted medical schools. One of the largest demonstrations had been in St. Louis after locals had found discarded remains of several dissected cadavers in an open pit behind St. Louis University. Five years later in 1849, a mob stormed Dr. McDowell’s Missouri Medical College, after the family of a girl whom McDowell had previously attended suspected him of later stealing her corpse from its grave. They were correct: McDowell had been determined to learn more of what caused her death, but upon receiving a tip-off note warning of the raid, he successfully hid the body, guided (he claimed) by a vision of his dead mother [5] While never actually caught in the act, it was common knowledge in St. Louis that McDowell and his medical students were exhuming the recently dead in order to dissect the bodies. [1] Rumors spread and he later became known as "Mad Doctor McDowell." [6]
September 11 of the same year, suspicion again fell on McDowell after the disappearance of a woman last seen walking her dog in the vicinity of the Missouri Medical College. Being the wife of a prominent German-American businessman, the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Malter headlined the local newspapers. In the excitement a witness told reporters he had seen Mrs. Malter’s handkerchief “or some other article” of hers, near McDowell’s medical school. By noon of 14 September, hundreds of angry locals, led by the German-immigrant population of St. Louis, had gathered outside the Missouri Medical College demanding to search for evidence of Mrs. Malter's murder. McDowell prepared for a violent stand off; he had kept "3 cannons and 1,400 muskets" that had been acquired in his home state of Kentucky in 1846 and intended for political unrest but were unused. Three cannons were sited in the upper room of the school, and the "old flintlock muskets" were gathered to man the defenses with 30 armed students. [7] Fortunately for all concerned, the Police intervened for a peaceful solution. Although McDowell publicly maintained a loudly defiant gung-ho attitude, his students believed he was secretly relieved, having the previous evening gone to the authorities to request protection from an impending public attack. McDowell agreed to Mrs. Malter's husband searching the premises on condition that the mob disperse. No evidence of Mrs. Malters or her alleged murder were found. Two months later Mrs. Malters was found alive and living in Alton Missouri "with a 'handsomer man." Those who found her thought she seemed "mentally unstable" [7]
Infamy further increased after the unusual burial of McDowell's deceased child, Amanda. Although a leading proponent of the importance of science in medicine, McDowell also had strong Spiritual beliefs, fired by a vision of his dead mother, which he believed helped him evade arrest after exhuming a former patient from her grave. Author, and cousin, Mary Ridenbaugh documented his telling of that experience: [8] [ citation needed ] McDowell believed that traditional burial "stifled the soul" and that a different type of interment would facilitate communication between the living and dead - this was his aim when interring his daughter in a container of preserving alcohol, kept secured in his cave workspace in Hannibal, Missouri. However, when McDowell learned that some locals had been daring each other to break into the cave, and disrespecting his child's remains by opening the copper coffin to scare themselves with ghost stories, he had the body removed for a safer and more traditional burial in the family vault behind the newly built Missouri Medical College. [7] McDowell's unconventional dealing with grief further added to the swirl of lurid rumors around him, including a fable of the body being forcibly removed by angry Hannibal citizens.
During the onset of the Civil War, McDowell was recruited as the Surgeon General of the Confederate Army of the West. [2] His medical school was taken over by the Union and temporarily became the Gratiot Street Prison. During this time, there were numerous reports of bones being removed from the building, and whispers that it was haunted spread through the public. McDowell returned to St. Louis in 1865 to find the school in ruins. Together with a colleague, he began to rebuild the Medical College. He died three years later, and is buried in the Bellefontaine Cemetery, together with his other family members, in St. Louis. [2]
Andries van Wezel, latinised as Andreas Vesalius, was an anatomist and physician who wrote De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, what is considered to be one of the most influential books on human anatomy and a major advance over the long-dominant work of Galen. Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy. He was born in Brussels, which was then part of the Habsburg Netherlands. He was a professor at the University of Padua (1537–1542) and later became Imperial physician at the court of Emperor Charles V.
The history of anatomy extends from the earliest examinations of sacrificial victims to the sophisticated analyses of the body performed by modern anatomists and scientists. Written descriptions of human organs and parts can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Egyptian papyri, where attention to the body was necessitated by their highly elaborate burial practices.
The history of anatomy in the 19th century saw anatomists largely finalise and systematise the descriptive human anatomy of the previous century. The discipline also progressed to establish growing sources of knowledge in histology and developmental biology, not only of humans but also of animals.
Mondino de Luzzi, or de Liuzzi or de Lucci,, also known as Mundinus, was an Italian physician, anatomist and professor of surgery, who lived and worked in Bologna. He is often credited as the restorer of anatomy because he made seminal contributions to the field by reintroducing the practice of public dissection of human cadavers and writing the first modern anatomical text.
Dissection is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause of death in humans. Less extensive dissection of plants and smaller animals preserved in a formaldehyde solution is typically carried out or demonstrated in biology and natural science classes in middle school and high school, while extensive dissections of cadavers of adults and children, both fresh and preserved are carried out by medical students in medical schools as a part of the teaching in subjects such as anatomy, pathology and forensic medicine. Consequently, dissection is typically conducted in a morgue or in an anatomy lab.
Body snatching is the illicit removal of corpses from graves, morgues, and other burial sites. Body snatching is distinct from the act of grave robbery as grave robbing does not explicitly involve the removal of the corpse, but rather theft from the burial site itself. The term 'body snatching' most commonly refers to the removal and sale of corpses primarily for the purpose of dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. The term was coined primarily in regard to cases in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. However, there have been cases of body snatching in many countries, with the first recorded case dating back to 1319 in Bologna, Italy.
Grave robbery, tomb robbing, or tomb raiding is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities. It is usually perpetrated to take and profit from valuable artefacts or personal property. A related act is body snatching, a term denoting the contested or unlawful taking of a body, which can be extended to the unlawful taking of organs alone.
The Body Snatcher is a 1945 American horror film directed by Robert Wise, based on the 1884 short story of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson. Philip MacDonald adapted the story for the screen, and producer Val Lewton, credited as "Carlos Keith", modified MacDonald's screenplay. The film stars Boris Karloff as John Gray, a cab driver who moonlights as a grave robber, and later murderer, to illegally supply Dr. MacFarlane with cadavers for his classes, and makes mention of Burke, Hare, and Dr. Knox, in reference to the West Port murders of 1828. Alongside Karloff and Daniell, the film's cast includes Russell Wade, Edith Atwater, and Bela Lugosi. It was the last film in which both Karloff and Lugosi appeared.
A tissue bank is an establishment that collects and recovers human cadaver tissue for the purposes of medical research, education and allograft transplantation. A tissue bank may also refer to a location where biomedical tissue is stored under cryogenic conditions and is generally used in a more clinical sense.
The London Burkers were a group of body snatchers operating in London, England, who apparently modeled their activities on the notorious Burke and Hare murders. They came to prominence in 1831 for murdering victims to sell to anatomists, by luring and drugging them at their dwelling in the northern end of Bethnal Green, near St Leonard's, Shoreditch in London. They were also known as the Bethnal Green Gang.
A cadaver or corpse is a dead human body. Cadavers are used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. Students in medical school study and dissect cadavers as a part of their education. Others who study cadavers include archaeologists and arts students. In addition, a cadaver may be used in the development and evaluation of surgical instruments.
The Medical Renaissance, from around 1400 to 1700 CE, was a period of progress in European medical knowledge, with renewed interest in the ideas of the ancient Greek, Roman civilizations and Islamic medicine, following the translation into Medieval Latin of many works from these societies. Medical discoveries during the Medical Renaissance are credited with paving the way for modern medicine.
A prosection is the dissection of a cadaver or part of a cadaver by an experienced anatomist in order to demonstrate for students anatomic structure. In a dissection, students learn by doing; in a prosection, students learn by either observing a dissection being performed by an experienced anatomist or examining a specimen that has already been dissected by an experienced anatomist.
An anatomy murder is a murder committed in order to use all or part of the cadaver for medical research or teaching. It is not a medicine murder because the body parts are not believed to have any medicinal use in themselves. The motive for the murder is created by the demand for cadavers for dissection, and the opportunity to learn anatomy and physiology as a result of the dissection. Rumors concerning the prevalence of anatomy murders are associated with the rise in demand for cadavers in research and teaching produced by the Scientific Revolution. During the 19th century, the sensational serial murders associated with Burke and Hare and the London Burkers led to legislation which provided scientists and medical schools with legal ways of obtaining cadavers. Rumors persist that anatomy murders are carried out wherever there is a high demand for cadavers. These rumors, like those concerning organ theft, are hard to substantiate, and may reflect continued, deep-held fears of the use of cadavers as commodities.
Mark Twain Cave — originally McDowell's Cave — is a show cave located near Hannibal, Missouri. It was named for author Mark Twain whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Clemens lived in Hannibal from 1839 to 1853, age 4 to 17. It is the oldest operating show cave in the state, giving tours continuously since 1886. Along with nearby Cameron Cave, it became a registered National Natural Landmark in 1972, with a citation reading "Exceptionally good examples of the maze type of cavern development." The cave — as "McDougal's Cave" — plays an important role in the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain and was renamed in honor of the author in 1880.
Resurrectionists were body snatchers who were commonly employed by anatomists in the United Kingdom during the 18th and 19th centuries to exhume the bodies of the recently dead. Between 1506 and 1752 only a very few cadavers were available each year for anatomical research. The supply was increased when, in an attempt to intensify the deterrent effect of the death penalty, Parliament passed the Murder Act 1752. By allowing judges to substitute the public display of executed criminals with dissection, the new law significantly increased the number of bodies anatomists could legally access. This proved insufficient to meet the needs of the hospitals and teaching centres that opened during the 18th century. Corpses and their component parts became a commodity, but although the practice of disinterment was hated by the general public, bodies were not legally anyone's property. The resurrectionists therefore operated in a legal grey area.
The doctors' riot was an incident that occurred in April 1788 in New York City, where the illegal procurement of corpses from the graves of the recently deceased caused a mass expression of discontent from poorer New Yorkers that was directed primarily at physicians and medical students.
The Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1883 is legislation of the State of Pennsylvania to facilitate medical education. This act allowed teachers and students to be able to dissect bodies without have to resort to buying from grave robbers or buying body parts. This act was written to prevent grave robbing, and to even out the availability of corpses.
As anatomy classes in medical education proliferated in the 19th century, so too did the need for bodies to dissect. Grave robbery proliferated, along with associated social discontent, revulsion, and unhappiness. Conflicts arose between medical practitioners and defenders of bodies, graves and graveyards. This resulted in riots. Social legislation was passed in many countries to address the competing concerns.
"An Act to Promote Medical Science and Protect Burial Grounds", informally known as the Bone Bill, was an 1854 bill in New York. Its purpose was to greatly increase the number of cadavers available for legal dissection in medical schools.
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