Alexander Monro (tertius) Charles found the sight of surgery so upsetting that he stopped trying and turned his attention to natural history. During Monro's tenure as Professor of Anatomy, Edinburgh was rocked by scandal due to the notorious "Burke and Hare murders" in which healthy individuals were intentionally killed in order to supply cadavers for dissection by anatomy lecturers and their students. One of the murderers, William Burke, was hanged on 28 January 1829, after which he was famously dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College by Monro himself. In a letter, Monro dipped his quill pen into Burke's blood and wrote, "This is
History of anatomy in the 19th century for use in medical colleges, particularly for anatomy demonstrations. Before the 19th century, most were bodies of executed criminals or, more rarely, corpses donated by relatives. The reason being, having the body dissected after death was considered to be a fate worse than death. The Murder Act of 1752 permitted that the bodies of murderers be dissected after death to contribute to medical knowledge. After the criminal was hanged, medical students would be there as the body was taken down from the gallows and would argue over who would dissect the body, making the anatomist as feared as the executioner