Very Ghastly Tale

Very Ghastly Tale

Told by a Doctor in a Confidential Moment

THE TRIALS OF SCIENCE

Medical Students Gain Surreptitious Knowledge

And Bury a Stolen Body to Have it Dug up and a Coroners Inquest Held Upon It.-A Mystery Explained.

Almost every person, who is old enough to vote and has lived in this city from his infancy, can remember how the medical students startled the inhabitants with their grave robberies in the old days before the state furnished subjects for dissection. This narration does not exactly treat of robbing a grave, but of a stolen body from the basement of the medical building. This cadaver had just been sent from some state institution and was still in the rongh-box before Doe. Nagle had time to pickle it.

There were three medics who were really students, and they took every risk, if necessary, to improve their kowledge of anatomy, hence they stole the body. To assist them in their study they asked the assistance of a young physician in the city, a very amiable and good natured man, whom everyone knows, and he graciously consented to help in the dissection. There were only certain things, of course, which they wished to more fully understand and when they got through, an arm and a foot were amputated and, more particularly, did they experiment on trephining the skull. The doctor advised them to take the cadaver to some out-of-town place and bury it in order not to be caught, which they did. And here comes the story.

The three embryo surgeons took the body and buried it near what is now the terminus of the boulevard on Broadway. In the night a day or two later there was a heavy rain. It poured so hard that it washed the dirt down from where the grave was so that an arm protruded, and in the morning it was discovered by a Fifth warder going to work. He immediately reported the murderous crime which, from all indications, had been perpetrated. The coroner had the body removed, and here occurred a peculiar coincidence. The same doctor, who helped the boys in heir amputations, was summoned on this most mysterious case.

Now, Dr. did not know where the body had been buried and imagine his surprise when he viewed the remains. To laugh would have been sacrilegious ; to tell the truth would have been telling tales out of school, but how could he keep that protruberant front from shaking with laughter. He called the coroner to one side and advised him that it was not foul play as there were no indications of it and, whispering into his ear, intimated that it was a dissecting table's subject.

Well, a coroner makes his money by holding inquests over dead bodies and he pointed out to the good doctor that the skull had a hole in it, which was undoubtedly made by a hatchet or something. If the coroner says a mystery surrounds it, there must be an inquest, and a jury was impaneled. The inquest was held in a place near the Fifth ward pump and the only two  witnesses were the man who discovered the corpse and the doctor. These were trying times for the latter. Testimony of a professional nature he must give, yet he dare not tell all he knew it would have created too much scandal. Nevertheless, in this particular art the craft never fails, and he gave good and sufficient reasons that the body had been for some time dead ; that the hole in the skull was due to an operation and that the arm and foot were severed some time before death. To discover the real cause of death an autopsy must be made and this the coroner thought the county could not stand or, anyway, he did not order it.

With this the jury brought in a verdict, "That the man had come to his death from some unknown cause and that his identity could not be learned. " What makes the doctor laugh mostly is the money he got out of it. From the students he received $30 for his services. During the dissection one of the medies was blood poisoned and he received $20 more for attending him, and from the county he received $25 for his services at the inquest, making a total of $75 he made on a dead man. Usually a doctor makes his money on a live person. The coroner received his fees, amounting to $12, the jury 50 cents each, rent of store for inquest $3, and the undertaker charged $15 more. All this, because the students were not cautious enough to bury their subject deeper, and it cost the county just $58.

Lieutenant W. B. Rinehart, of Seattle, Wash. , and wife, nee Miss Mattie Walz, are in the city. Lieut. Rinehart bas been in the volunteer service and was accompanied to Honolulu by his wife. It was on account of her poor health that he was compelled to return.