Dangerous dissections: the hazard from bodies supplied to Edinburgh anatomists, winter session, 1848-9

After the 1832 Anatomy Act, all bodies that were to be used by medical students for dissection were supplied to Schools of Anatomy based on their needs. During the Winter Session of 1848–9, a high proportion of the bodies supplied to the University of Edinburgh, and the majority of those supplied to the Argyle Square School had died of an infectious disease. Most had died from cholera, while others had died of typhus, tuberculosis or other infectious diseases. These bodies were not embalmed before dissection. Therefore, both medical students and their teachers in Departments of Anatomy, in addition to those in the hospitals in which they had died, would have been at risk of becoming infected or even dying as a consequence of exposure to these infected individuals.