Vermont's First Medical School Had Difficulty Finding Bodies For Instruction; Professors Resorted To Grave Robbing

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The CASTLETON MEDICAL COLLEGE of Castleton, VT, was founded in 1818 by three doctors who saw the need for a training school in Vermont, which was the only state in the country that didn?t have such a facility. They were Selah Gridley, Theodore Woodward and John Crosier.
Students heard lectures, read books and practiced with physicians over the course of their studies. They also got into some questionable and illegal practices: they robbed graves for bodies to practice autopsies on. The school was eventually eclipsed by a rival, the University of Vermont Medical School, which was founded in 1822 and shut down in 1861.

Offering three 1860 lecture tickets. Each is signed by a professor. Typical size is 3 ½ x 5. The tickets include one for ?Materia Medica and Therapeutics,? (signed by Professor WILLIAM PIERCE SEYMOUR) ?Anatomy,? (signed by Professor CORYDON L. FORD) and ?Medical Jurisprudence,? (signed by Professor PETER PINEO). Each ticket admitted HENRY N. BURR.

The quest for cadavers existed at other medical schools. Ford and his fellow anatomy professor Moses Gunn later found themselves on the staff of the University of Michigan, which started medical training in 1850. Most of the cadavers required could be gotten among those who died in poor houses and in prisons with no family or friends to pay for burial. Authorities were willing to part with them. The professors embalmed them and stored them for dissection. After the Civil War, the medical department at the University of Michigan began to grow, and each incoming class of medical students had a greater demand for bodies. They acquired as many bodies as they could legitimately. When the supply dried up, they stole them. They often engaged in conspiracies with men willing to rob graves.

Shortly after arriving at the University of Michigan, Gunn began a running war with the Regents over his proposal to move the medical department to populous Detroit, where there would be many more patients to treat. Finally, Gunn became so fed up that he not only moved to a new post in Chicago, he also made off with the medical department?s entire supply of 40 cadavers. When Michigan?s Board of Regents threatened legal action, Gunn called their bluff, saying they would never pursue him for fear of exposing the University?s traffic in the dead. The regents backed down.

This left the task of resupply entirely in the hands of Gunn?s close friend and colleague, Corydon Ford. Ford still faced his chronic problem of supply and demand. In a letter to a sympathetic Regent with whom he could speak confidentially ? Thomas Dwight Gilbert of Grand Rapids -- Ford complained about the rising expense and difficulties of acquiring cadavers. He said the medical department now needed at least 125 bodies every year. The cost was $20-$30 per body and $5-$10 for transportation and $2-$3 for preserving fluids.

PETER PINEO (1825-1891) was born in Nova Scotia, attended Harvard Medical School for one year and graduated from Bowdoin Medical School in 1847. He practiced medicine in Portland, ME, then in Boston, Barnstable and Groton, MA. He moved to Vermont in 1855 and was a professor at Castleton Medical College. In 1861, he was commissioned Surgeon of the 9th Massachusetts Infantry and then appointed Brigade Surgeon, U.S. Volunteers. He then took command of Douglas General Hospital in Washington, DC. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and Medical Inspector on February 9, 1863, and was assigned to the Department of the Gulf, where he served until the end of the war. He was Confederate President Jefferson Davis?s consulting surgeon at Fortress Monroe, where Davis was held prisoner after the war.

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