In the winter of 1810, Doctor Nathan Smith wrote from Hanover to a fellow physician in Philadelphia. Smith apologized for not writing sooner to his friend and colleague, blaming the delay on a "little bad luck" back in December that had given him "great inquietude." As the founder of Dartmouth's medical school in 1797 and its only professor of medicine at the time, Smith was also the instructor of anatomy. The bad luck, it turned out, was that Smith had contracted with an untrustworthy individual to procure a fresh cadaver for the school's anatomy lectures. Instead of going to Boston and purchasing a body there as instructed, the independent contractor instead snatched a newly deceased corpse from the Enfield graveyard only a few miles to the east of campus. It wasn't long before a local officer of the peace appeared in the middle of an anatomy lab dissection and reclaimed the cadaver. At the time of the letter, Smith expressed confidence that "we shall survive the accident without material injury either personal or to the Institution."President John Wheelock was less optimistic a few months earlier when writing to Benjamin J. Gilbert, a local lawyer and influential member of the community. In his letter to Gilbert, dated December 18th, 1809, Wheelock suggests that it was Dartmouth medical students who had stolen the body. Speaking for the College administration, he affirmed that "We cannot express the detestation and abhorence [sic] which we feel on account of this inhuman & barbarous act, nor our ardent desire that the perpetrator or perpetrators may be found and brought to justice, as an example to deter others from the perpetration of such an infamous crime." As evidence of the college's commitment to re-establishing the "public confidence" in Dartmouth, he included with his letter a resolution that granted Gilbert and other prominent leaders of the Upper Valley community permission to inspect the rooms of the students whenever they wished. In the resolution, Wheelock acknowledges that the reputation of the medical school is inextricably linked to that of the college, and that "recent events" have damaged the entire institution's reputation among the community.
