Surgeons' Hall demand for bodies for anatomical dissection exceeded supply. Two Irishmen living in Edinburgh, William Burke and William Hare, resorted to murdering victims to supply Knox's anatomy school. Hare turned King's evidence and Burke was tried, found guilty of murder and hanged. His body was dissected by Alexander Monro tertius, the University professor of anatomy, and the museum has on display two items from that notorious episode – Burke's death mask and a pocket book made from his skin. Joseph Bell (1837–1911) was an Edinburgh surgeon who was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh between 1887–89. He was
Dissection when it was performed by the student Pandit Madhusudan Gupta. Through the 1900s, the University teachers had to continually push against the social taboos of dissection, until around 1850 when the universities decided that it was more cost effective to train Indian doctors than bring them in from Britain. Indian medical schools were, however, training female doctors well before those in England. The current state of dissection in India is deteriorating. The number of hours spent in dissection labs during medical school has decreased substantially over the last twenty years. The future of anatomy education will probably be an elegant