ed enlargement of his classes, which sometimes rose to more than five hundred students; and with his thorough-going views of the importance of actual dissection to the well-prepared physician,-the demands of his establishment for subjects were necessarily large. These he had, of course, to meet in various ways. The home supply of bodies being insufficient, he made arrangements with distant places in England and Ireland to have subjects sent to Edinburgh. He was often compelled to pay so high for cadavers that it consumed the profits of his teaching, and in one session he lost nearly $4,000 from this cause alone. An enthusiast himself, and with an enthusiastic class, he could not endure to see the bare dissecting-tables, or to hear the importunate solicitations of his students seeking for professional opportunities that were denied them away from a medical school. Not infrequently the professors of medical colleges have joined the resurrectionists in their midnight adventures, or have pursued them alone; and many thrilling stories are recorded of their nocturnal exploits in getting possession of subjects which offered special interest to the anatomists. But Dr. Knox never indulged in these practices. He despised the resurrectionists whom he was compelled to use, and did his best to get a change of legislation by which anatomy might be prosecuted in a legal and legitimate way. Failing to secure this, he had to resort to the usual expedients for facilitating anatomical study—expedients as old as medical science.
On the 29th of November, 1827, an old man by the name of Donald died in West Port, one of the purlieus of Edinburgh. He lodged with an Irishman named William Hare, and died owing him four pounds. His creditor saw but one way of reimbursing himself, and that was by disposing of the old man's body to the doctors. Hare found a ready accomplice in William Burke, another Irishman, and also one of his lodgers. The body was removed from the coffin, and a bag of tanner's bark substituted for it. The lid was screwed down and the little funeral went off as usual. The same evening. Hare and Burke stealthily repaired to the university, and, meeting a student in the yard, asked for the rooms of Dr. Monroe, the Professor of Anatomy. The student happened to be a pupil of Knox's, and, upon discovering their errand, he advised them to try Knox's place in Surgeons' Square. There they sold the body for £7 10s., a large sum for them, and very easily obtained. They had not courage. to go into the regular business of body-stealing; and so Hare, the vilest of the two, suggested a fresh stroke of business, which was to inveigle the old and infirm into his quarters and "do for them." Hare started in search of a victim; and, prowling through the slums, met an old woman half drunk, and asked her to his house. He gave her whiskey until she became comatose, and then with Burke's assistance strangled her. The body brought £10.
