Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1901-04-19
SCARCITY O S||EFS'
NewLaw Rel ulatinI the Cadaver
Business Not Acceptable to
Medical Colleges.
Difficult to Secure Sufficient
Number Of Subjects for
Dissection.
Most Of the Supply Comes From
Colored Population Of
the South.
pecial to Times-Republican.

Special to Times Republican.
Iowa City. April 19.-The law passed
by the Twenty-eighth general assembly
regulating the manner in which bodies
shall be obtained for medical purposes
Las not proven entirely satisfactory as
yet in lis workings. Not enough
''stiffs" have been obtained under this
law to supply the needs of the univer-
sity college of medicine. and, as the
distribution of the bodies is supposed to
be made among the several medical.
schools and colleges of the state in pro-
PORTION to their registration of students,
the supposition is that the other medi-
cal colleges of the state have been also
Shy" on "stiffs." The university needs
about eighty or elghty-five cadavers
each year for the use of Its students in
the medical, homeopathic medical and
dental courses. Before the law of 1900
went into effect a large number of the
cadavers needed were obtained from
Davenport. under an arrangement
whereby the university obtained all the
available "stiffs" OF that locality. The
new law cut off this supply and has not
provided the number of subjects from
other sources. Only twenty five cadav-
ers were obtained the past year under
the new law.
The rules and regulations for this eq-
uitable distribution under the new law
We're to be made by the state board OF
health and the expenses TO be borne by
tine medical school or college obtaining
the bodies. A different custom Is estab-
lished by the state board of health. The
only expense to which the state board
of health Is put is the amount of 30
cent telegram from the coroner or other
person having the dead body announce
ing that fact and another 3O-cent tee-
gram telling the coroner where to send
the body. Yet the medical school is
made to send Sc to the state board Of
health besides SIS to the coroner.
The shortage Of subjects for dissection
became so great last winter that a
member of the faculty made hurried
trip to the south to hurry up a shipment
of negro "stiffs." The cadavers OBJ
tainet from the south are entirely me-
groes, the saying among the men en-
gagged in the business of furnishing
them to the medical schools being that
in their country the negro is worth more
dead than alive The madical e,ahopIs
nav $50 for each southern subject ,Thev
are lust as good for no nnrnosns, Of d;s,.
section as Iowa bodies The III, ness, i !,
ACCOMPANIED by3 4, considerable risk ia
those engaged In n several rnne.see
gentlemen having been comneIled ia
quit the business on account Of being
found out by Investigating commuters
of one kind or another. including yiei-
lance co,nn,ittee, me nrsss.,,1 ne
from whom the university obtains ito
subjects when the state suppIy fails off
lives In Tennessee and does a whole
sale business with medical schools. the
bodies are shipped in what are known
al short boxes.
The university once had an arrange
ment with the ,norpue az the citv ~
New York which was most SATISFACTORY
III was made by one of tho 1nivers,ity
professors, who hung abo,t I t,.. sr,ore no
for some time before he made tho sds.a1
with the right marty. n was broken off
by some Investigating committee. which
discovered that the books of the more,,,e
showed some 500 people 10 b. buried on
little island out in the bay where there