The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-12-28
MUST HAVE DEAD BODIES.
DR.. Roby's Timely Article On the
Medical College.
THE PUBLIC DEMANDS KNOWLEDGE

In the Men Who Practice Medicine,
Yet Refuses TO Provide Amy Means
for Physicians to Acquire KnOwI.
edge.
The following article from DR. q. W.
Roby's pen appears in "The Family Doc
ior' department which he conducts in
the Kansas Farmer:
The public demands of all medical
men an ample and intimate knowledge
of all the physical sciences, including
anatomy and physiology, which can con-
tribute to their skill and efficiency as
physicians, and boycotts them if they
atom pt to practice without such knowl-
edge; and secondly. it shuts and bars the
doors to such knowledge and makes 1t a
crime to obtain it surreptitiously.
The public says to the physician: ''You
shall not practice in our midst without
full knowledge of the human frame and
its functions, and we shall make you
criminal under the law if you attempt
it." aud then it says to him: "Have a
CAKE! If you rob our graves for bodies
to dissect, We will send yon to prison as
a malefactor. Hands off,"
And so, between command and male
diction, the doctor whose bread and but
ter depends very much on fulfilling the
night and steal that weich enlighten-
ed public both commands and forbids.
Halfway informed men say: "Why the
law already provides lsGd bodies for
dissection. See the statutes in corrobo-
rationw
And when we turn to the sacred sta
tutes we find that We may have for ana
tomical study the bodies of criminals
who die in hospitals and the penitentiary
n g. Ret A. bora
the statute builds Chinese wall of al
most total exclusion by providing SO
many exceptions and contingencies that
probably not one such body il the hun
drcd can ever reach the medical class le-
gally, and while it is permissible under
the law, yet the state makes no dead
criminals by public or private execu ton,
for the colleges to use.
The governors sign no death warrants.
Then we are gravely told. "Why, you
must go outside for bodies to dissect,"
and when we look over our boundary
fences We find that all our sister states
have about as rigid statutes as we have,
and that it is crime to ship dead men
or women from one state to another for
dissection, and it is a crime to ship them
from one locality to another within the
state for such purpose. And again we
are told: "You must close your doors
Chicago or New York" Suppose we did
that, and then suppose we followed up
the logic of that demand, and sent all
our law students and normal stu
dents and agricultural students and mu-
sic students out of the state to be edu-
Gated, how long would it be until
the greatest wall of the centuries
| would go up from the sacred soil of Kan
sas over the giant outrage of all agesW
1 "a hi Int HiEza0t
dead, anyway Then whose dead
shall we dissect? Are they not all "our
dead?" You say, swell, go and dissect
Missouri's dead" and when We get there,
Missouri says, "they are are our dead"
Illinois says, "they are our dead" Then
what shall be donef l answer, enlarge
| the scope of our statutes, and make our
| sacred dead sacred to science as we'll as
| affection. Not by stealth, not by mid
night plundering of graveyards, but Dy
the state taking up the matter and en-
| gaging to provide all medical colleges
| within her borders all necessary subjects
for legitimate study. Let commission
issue. and let suitable bounties be paid
for willing subjects. There are enough
people in any community willing and
waiting to sell their bodies to science as
they sell their old clothes to the ragman.
l venture the assertion that, in further
ance of the common good of humanity,
there are enough old soldiers today in
| the state who would, under proper con-
ditions "without money and without
! price," offer their cast off bodies as will
linglv and Loyalty to the service of
science as they offered their living
bodies to the service of the same COM
munity of public interests during the
war. l am of that number myself.
| When am done with my body and my
old clothes, science and the ragman are
both welcome to what l shall have no
further use for. l am quite as willing to
be dissected by the votaries of science
as by worms The only escape from the
one OF the other is by ire-by cremation.
If our bodies bould be preserved from
all the inroads of decay and resolution,
then we might with some justification,
struggle to preserve them against the
laws of retrogression back to the primal
elements, but that we cannot do. Aud
the inalienable right of all the living is
that knowledge shall be obtained for the
benefit of the living, and a portion of
that necessary knowledge can only be
had from the dead. So we must be
reasonable and sensible in the matter
and provide legal means of obtaining
knowledge so there shall be no incentive
to steal it for the public good.
As am not even remotely connected
with any medical college, can speak
plainly and without prejudice We must
give science its due, or cease to make de-
mands of it.
Report On City Funds.