Coloured cartoon from the Glasgow Looking Glass 18 August 1825, the first in the series "Essay on Modern Medical Education". Entitled "The Alarm, or the Kirkyard in Danger", it depicts two skeletons marching with a drum and flag through a church graveyard, followed by a mob.
The flag bears the legend "Popular Anatomy Mechanics' Institution" and it may refer to fears that the inauguration of such classes would lead to more cases of "resurrectionism", or grave robbing, by men in search of newly-dead corpses - there was an insatiable demand from the city's medical schools for fresh cadavres which surgery and anatomy teachers could use for dissection. The drum bears the name of the Glasgow Chronicle newspaper.
Reference: Sp Coll Bh14-x.8
Glasgow University Library, Special Collections
Keywords:
anatomy, cemeteries, churches, drums, flags, Glasgow Chronicle, Glasgow Looking Glass, Glasgow Mechanics' Institution, grave robbers, grave robbing, grave stones, graveyards, lithographs, medical schools, mobs, Northern Looking Glass, resurrectionists, skeletons, surgeons, surgery
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