It has long been a practice with the
surgeons of that city, to steal from the grave bodies recently buried.
A citizen had lost his wife: he went, the first or second evening after
her burial, to pay a visit to her grave.. He found that it had been
disturbed, and suspected from what quarter. He found means to be
admitted to the anatomical lecture of that day, and on his entering the
room, saw the body of his wife, naked and under dissection. He raised
the people immediately. The body, in the mean time, was secreted. They
entered into and searched the houses of the physicians whom they most
suspected, but found nothing. One of them however more guilty or more
timid than the rest, took asylum in the prison. The mob considered
this an acknowledgment of guilt. They attacked the prison. The Governor
ordered militia to protect the culprit, and suppress the mob. The
militia, thinking the mob had just provocation, refused to turn out.
Hereupon the people of more reflection, thinking it more dangerous that
even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law,
than that he should escape, armed themselves, and went to protect the
physician.
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