 . . . Fall 1999
EDMUND ANDREWS AND THE BODY SNATCHERS Edmund Andrews was the president of the U-M class of 1849. After graduation, he studied medicine in Detroit with Zina Pitcher. Forty years later, after having built a career as professor of anatomy at Chicago's Rush Memorial Hospital and then of surgery at the Chicago Medical College, Andrews wrote his reminiscences for a memorial book of his class. In that 1889 work, Andrews described his duties as a "resurrectionist," when he got bodies for Pitcher's classes:
Before we got through, a constable got after us, with intent to impede the anatomical science. He and the Sheriff held a solemn consultation on the matter, but as an election was just pending they concluded that it was an inconvenient time to alienate the votes and influence of the whole medical profession and so they concluded to "lay the subject on the table." The turmoil must have been behind the Regents' 1851 decree:
Getting all these bodies "was pretty hard work at first," Andrews admitted, "and I had to get up thirteen cadavers with my own hands the first winter." The techniques were simple and universal. The body had to be fresh (a cadaver was useless unless pickled within a week), and it didn't take much to fetch one–a wagon, a bunch of common tools and a couple of strong men. In the dark of night they made their way to new graves where the soil was still loose and shoveled aside enough to open the head of the coffin.
With a hook or rope, they grasped the body under the head or armpits and slid it out and stole off into the night. Any amateurs in the trade quickly learned refinements such as leaving clothes and other identifying items in the grave. It was in barrels marked "pickles" that most of the bodies arrived in Ann Arbor, shipped from all over the country to nonexistent companies that would end up in general delivery at the train station where they could be picked up by the demonstrator's agents.
Alger B. Crandell, who recounted the city's early story in Ann's Amazing Arbor, reports the story of a man who, as a child in 1910, saw a wagon of pickles rolling through town on a hot summer day. After swelling and swelling, a barrel burst open and, as brine poured out, "the heads and bare shoulders of the bodies of two men popped up."
Bribery was required down the line, making the purchase of bodies a major expense for medical schools. In the academic year 1861-62, a bill for bodies cropped up in the Regents' budget–the only time that was allowed to happen; the cost of "procuring 45 anatomical subjects–$1,367.46," or $30 a body.
The laws in America changed slowly. Beginning in the East, state by state required bodies buried at public expense to be given over to medical schools. Those laws were of little help to U-M, however, for they attached large penalties to the sale or shipment of bodies out of state. It wasn't until 1881 that the Michigan Legislature required the bodies of indigents who would otherwise be buried by the state, to be turned over to U-M, with sufficient penalties to ensure that it was done. In 1958, Michigan passed legislation allowing for the donation of bodies to medical schools.
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Scientific medical education begins with anatomy. Understanding the body's structure, systems and disease states requires poking about in one. Because there was no legal way to obtain a body for study in the 1840s, there was no recourse but to plunder the graves of the newly dead. This troubled physicians and the public alike, since removing a body from its resting-place has offended religions and violated civil law and custom in virtually every society. It also meant dealing with lowlifes and criminals.
In 1850, Andrews entered the U-M Medical Department's first class. One of his anatomy instructors was Robert C. Kedzie, who later wrote of a raid on a graveyard near Ann Arbor. When the disturbed plot was discovered, "A mob gathered in the evening with the avowed purpose of burning the medical building. "The medical school was protected Kedzie continued, by "a guard of one hundred armed medics" who patrolled the grounds until the mob dispersed.