FOR PHYSICIANS-TO-BE and surgeons-to-be, an understanding of human anatomy is a fundamental prerequisite of their education and training. Important as dissection is to comprehending the human condition, there existed strong popular prejudice against it in antebellum America. Societal indignation proved a constant deterrent to anatomical instructors and their steady supply of cadavers. With dissection riots occurring intermittently, including the widely reported trashing of surgeon John Davidge's (1768-1829) anatomical theater in Baltimore, Md (1807), medical school faculty members were often forced to calm public opinion. For instance, the physician/surgeons who taught at the Vermont Academy of Medicine, Castleton, disseminated a proclamation in the mid 1820s, declaring, somewhat dubiously, that "bodies disinterred hereabouts would not be used in the department of practical anatomy."