Dr Southwood Smith: A Retrospect

Thomas Southwood Smith (1788–1861) was a minister, physician and social reformer, who considerably improved the health of the poor by linking sanitation with epidemics. A utilitarian, and friend of Jeremy Bentham, his arguments in The Use of the Dead to the Living (1827) helped lead to the Anatomy Act of 1832 which allowed corpses from workhouses to be sold to medical schools, and so ended the market for grave-robbers while improving medical education. Although the fame of his granddaughter...