Description
Petition "To the Right Honorable, Honorable and Reverend His Majesty's Commissioners for visiting the Universities and Colleges of Scotland, from the Medical Students of the University of Edinburgh", stating that for their degrees a thorough knowledge of anatomy is required, noting that this can only be obtained through dissections, and that therefore it is "of the highest importance to the welfare and the proper culture of Medical science that an ample supply of subjects for this purpose should be obtained". The petition notes that "from the want of some legislative regulation and from a variety of other causes the scarcity of subjects of late years has been so great as much to impede the progress of the students.. so much so that the exorbitant price demanded for them amounts nearly to a prohibition to the duty of this special branch of Medical Education and has led to the practice of exhumation to which so many Evils detrimental both to the feelings and moral of the Community have been described". The petition goes on to note that as a result students have had to resort to Paris and other foreign Universities to complete their Anatomical studies, and requests the commissioners "to grant such remedies for the Evils above", signed by c. 140 Medical students with their addresses, 2 large vellum sheets, one sheet with portion cut out and reattached, dated Edinburgh, 28th March 1828, signed J. Weatherspoon, Writer to the Signet", c. 60cm x 138cm.
Footnote
Note: A petition for more cadavers for dissection at the exact time of the Burke and Hare murders.
Before 1832, there were insufficient cadavers legitimately available for the study and teaching of anatomy in Britain's medical schools. As medical science began to flourish in the early nineteenth century, the demand for cadavers rose sharply, but at the same time the legal supply failed to keep pace. One of the main sources—the bodies of executed criminals—had begun to dry up owing to a reduction in the number of executions being carried out in the early nineteenth century. The situation of too few corpses being available to doctors for demonstrating anatomical dissection to growing numbers of students attracted criminal elements willing to obtain specimens by any means. As at similar institutions, doctors teaching at the Edinburgh Medical School, which was universally renowned for medical sciences, relied increasingly on body-snatchers for a steady supply of "anatomical subjects" . The activities of these so-called "resurrectionists" gave rise to particular public fear and revulsion, but, such were the financial inducements, the illegal trade continued to grow. It was a short step from grave-robbing to anatomy murder, as exemplified by the Burke and Hare murders of 1828 in Edinburgh. Interestingly this petition dates from March 1828, about the time of the second murder of the 16 murders committed by Burke and Hare between January and November 1828.