Doctors' Riot of 1788
by Andy McPhee;
English | 2026 | ISBN: 149308805X | 248 pages | True EPUB | 17.32 MB
In April 1788, word of one particular body snatching quickly spread, and over the course of days, thousands of New Yorkers descended upon a New York City anatomy lab in a growing and dangerous riot. This book reveals the forgotten history of the so-called Doctors' Riot of 1788, along the way explaining the history of body snatching in the United States and England and exploring the moral questions behind an existential medical crisis: Does the need for medical students to learn anatomy on cadavers override society's demand for maintaining the dignity of its dead?
As the Doctors' Riot boiled over, Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and Revolutionary War hero Baron von Steuben were called in to quell the rioters, to no avail. Eventually, the state militia was ordered to fire into the crowd, killing several and injuring far more.
In this riveting and revelatory history, Andy McPhee delves into the post-revolutionary period of America to trace the foundational changes spurred by the riot, the influence of the riot on framers of the Constitution, the formation of Black-only churches and graveyards, how the discovery of formaldehyde heralded a new era in embalming practices, what body snatching looks like today, and how the teaching of anatomy continues to change and adapt to new technologies.
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