Upon such depraved characters as the Cunninghams did the anatomists of the nineteenth century have to rely for the procurement of their anatomical subjects prior to the passage of anatomy laws, which made it unnecessary to resort to the nefarious and odious practice of body snatching. Inasmuch as the identities of the procurers and of the bodies which they delivered to the medical colleges were unknown to the anatomy professors, all business transactions having been carried on through an intermediary person—usually the janitor—the professors were consequently absolved of being a principal or accessory to the crime of body snatching. Granted that anyone who would be so wanton as to make his livelihood by desecrating places of human sepulture was deserving of all the villifying names hurled at him; nevertheless we should not lose sight of the fact that the sins of commission of the ghoulish resurrectionists were made possible by sins of omission of the public and of their representatives in the legislative halls, who refused for so many years to support an anatomy law, which, as time has proved, abolished the need for resurrectionists.
[1]Juettner, Otto: Daniel Drake and His Followers (Cincinnati, 1909), p. 395.
[2]Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December 24, 1870.
[3]Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, February 3 and 4, 1871.
[5]Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, January 3, 1872.
—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
—Conjecturally restored the reference to footnote 5 to the least implausible place in the text.
—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.