BODY-SNATCHING.
Published by
BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY,
LONDON.
———
1824.
T. C. HANSARD,
Pater-noster-row Press.
ADVERTISEMENT.
THE following pages are reprinted, with some modification, from thethird Number of the Westminster Review. They treat of a subject on whichit is of great importance that the public should be well informed, andit is in order to facilitate the circulation of the knowledge which theycommunicate respecting it, that the proprietors of the above-mentionedwork have liberally consented to the re-publication of this article in{1}the form of a pamphlet.
BODY-SNATCHING.
EVERY one desires to live as long as he can. Every one values health“above all gold and treasure.” Every one knows that, as far as his ownindividual good is concerned, protracted life and a frame of body soundand strong, free from the thousand pains which flesh is heir to, areunspeakably more important than all other objects, because life andhealth must be secured before any possible result of any possiblecircumstance can be of consequence to him. In the improvement of the artwhich has for its object the preservation of health and life, everyindividual is, therefore, deeply interested. An enlightened physicianand a skilful surgeon, are in the daily habit of administering to theirfellow men more real and unquestionable good, than is communicated, orcommunicable by any other class of human beings to another. Ignorantphysicians and surgeons are the most deadly enemies of the community:the plague itself is not so destructive: its ravages are at distantintervals, and are accompanied with open and alarming notice of itspurpose and power; theirs are constant, silent, secret; and it is whilethey are looked up to as saviours, with the confidence of hope, thatthey give speed to the progress of disease and certainty to the strokeof death.
It is deeply to be lamented that the community, in general, are soentirely ignorant of all that relates to the art and the science of{2}medicine. An explanation of the functions of the animal economy; oftheir most common and important deviations from a healthy state; of theremedies best adapted to restore them to a sound condition, and of themode in which they operate, as far as that is known, ought to form apart of every course of liberal education. The profound ignorance of thepeople on all these subjects is attended with many disadvantages tothemselves, and operates unfavourably on the medical character. Inconsequence of this want of information, persons neither know what arethe attainments of the man in whose hands they place their life, norwhat they ought to be; they can neither form an opinion of the course ofeducation which it is incumbent upon him to follow, nor judge of thesuccess with which he has availed himself of the means of knowledgewhich have been afforded him. There is one branch of medical educationin particular, the foundation, in fact, on which the wholesuperstructure must be raised, the necessity of which is not commonlyunderstood, but which requires only to be stated to be perceived.Perhaps it is impossible to name any one subject which it is of moreimportance that the community should understand. It is one in whichevery man’s life is deeply implicated: it is one on which every man’s