The New England Weekly Review

Mr. Editor.—I have noticed in the Boston papers of late, that the Legislature of Massachusetts have been endeavoring to make some legal provision relative to anatomical subjects for their medical schools, with the view of securing the repose of the dead, and at the same time sustaining the interests of science and surgical skill, so important to the living. These proceedings are favourably noticed in the New York papers, and among other things I find that the Editor of the New York American says should the bill proposed in the Massachusetts Legislature finally become a law, that state " will probably be the first on this side of the Atlantic to provide effectually for their medical seminaries." This is a mistake. The State of Connecticut has long since by highly penal statutes, most effectually protected the dead, while ample provision is made for our medical college. The statute of our state provides that the bodies of convicts dying in our State Prison, who have no known relatives, shall, at the discretion of the Directors of the Prison, be delivered to the medical professors for the use of the College. From this source, I believe, an ample supply of subjects has been furnished, without occasioning pain or distress to the living. From the great number of State convicts in Massachusetts and New York, there is no doubt but that a similar provision in those States, would abundantly furnish their medical schools with subjects, and that too without interfering with our natural, and we may say virtuous prejudices in favour of the quiet repose of the dead.

MEDICUS.