Skip to main content

The timeline can be navigated with the “Scroll Left” and “Scroll Right” buttons or by dragging the pointer to a date on the timeline waveform (located at the bottom of the screen on the desktop version and on the left of the screen on mobile). To filter by a particular topic and see a smaller section of the data, make a selection on the dropdown “Filters” menu or click “Search” to do a keyword search. Hover over the abbreviated filter tags in the blue boxes to see the complete name of the filter, or click a filter to display all the data with this tag. If you want to take a deeper dive into a specific topic by viewing a narrative essay page and a curated timeline, click on “Stories.”

Read More
Several men lean with full force to pry a door open. Inside there are people hovered over a table. A medical diagram is hanging on the wall.
A wood engraving of New York rioters trying to break their way into a doctor's dissection area.

New York "Doctors' Riot."

Date: 1788

CHIL
EXP
LLP
DDD
MED
RES
A wood engraving of New York rioters trying to break their way into a doctor's dissection area.

Accounts vary for how the riot begins. In some tellings, a group of children found an amputated arm outside the hospital. Others say they saw an amputated arm hanging out a window, and others say the children climbed a ladder and witnessed a dissection through a window. Whatever the facts, the neighborhood riots against the hospital over concern about its use of deceased bodies. This leads to the first act to criminalize the digging up of cadavers for the purpose of dissection, instead recommending using the bodies of executed incarcerated people for this purpose. Similar riots will occur in multiple states and cities throughout the following century, with each leading to changes in local laws related to dissection.