a skeleton, and dissected whatever they could lay their hands on, chiefly horses and dogs: actual cadavers were almost impossible to obtain, though a long letter describes their frantic efforts to secure the body of a criminal who had been hanged.[1]
The scientific ardor thus early enkindled did not abate after graduation; almost every one of the group studied medicine under the illustrious Dr. Joseph Warren of ’59, John’s older brother (who was probably the causa causans of the whole matter), and entered active practice. It may have been owing to their instigation and example that “Mr. Dasturge,” a physician and surgeon from Paris, who had drifted into Boston, advertised in the papers of November, 1774, proposing that the local doctors should “meet and form a Corps,” build an amphitheatre, begin a series of lectures, and even open a botanic garden![2] But popular interest in medicine was at a low ebb; besides, Bostonians at that juncture had other things to think of, and the project of the ambitious Gaul fell flat.
- ↑ Life of John Warren, 23, 26, 297, 233. The idea of medical instruction at Harvard had been in the air for several years. In 1765 Dr. John Perkins of Boston had written that there ought to be “a well judged and intelligent practice of physic, particularly to have a professor at our College…that those designed for the business might be instructed in the true principles and theory… Few besides physicians of long experience can be sensible of the importance of such an institution.” Cf. also Isaac Royall’s will, page 196, post.
- ↑ Massachusetts Gazette & Boston Post Boy, November 28, 1774.
