Joseph Nash McDowell

Joseph Nash McDowell (1805–1868) was an American medical doctor primarily remembered for his grave-digging practices, where he illegally exhumed corpses in order to study human anatomy. He is also known for his influence on Mark Twain, and was likely the inspiration for Twain's fictional character Dr. Robinson in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Early career McDowell moved to St. Louis in 1839 with a reputation that preceded him. He had previously worked in Kentucky, Philadelphia, and Ohio at various medical facilities, and studied at Transylvania University in Kentucky. In 1840, he founded the medical department at Kemper College in St. Louis, which became Missouri Medical College after Kemper's dissolution in 1845. After McDowell's death, his medical school eventually became affiliated with the Washington University School of Medicine in 1899.

Collecting corpses In the 1840s, using cadavers to study human anatomy was a highly uncommon and frowned upon practice in the United States. While never actually caught in the act, it was common knowledge in St. Louis that McDowell and his medical students were exhuming the recently dead in order to dissect the bodies.

September 11 of the same year, suspicion again fell on McDowell after the disappearance of a woman last seen walking her dog in the vicinity of the Missouri Medical College. Being the wife of a prominent German-American businessman, the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Malter headlined the local newspapers. In the excitement a witness told reporters he had seen Mrs. Malter’s handkerchief “or some other article” of hers, near McDowell’s medical school. By noon of 14 September, hundreds of angry locals, led by the German-immigrant population of St. Louis, had gathered outside the Missouri Medical College demanding to search for evidence of Mrs. Malter's murder. McDowell prepared for a violent stand off; he had kept "3 cannons and 1,400 muskets" that had been acquired in his home state of Kentucky in 1846 and intended for political unrest but were unused. Three cannons were sited in the upper room of the school, and the "old flintlock muskets" were gathered to man the defenses with 30 armed students. Fortunately for all concerned, the Police intervened for a peaceful solution. Although McDowell publicly maintained a loudly defiant gung-ho attitude, his students believed he was secretly relieved, having the previous evening gone to the authorities to request protection from an impending public attack. McDowell agreed to Mrs. Malter's husband searching the premises on condition that the mob disperse. No evidence of Mrs. Malters or her alleged murder were found. Two months later Mrs. Malters was found alive and living in Alton Missouri "with a 'handsomer man." Those who found her thought she seemed "mentally unstable" McDowell believed that traditional burial "stifled the soul" and that a different type of interment would facilitate communication between the living and dead - this was his aim when interring his daughter in a container of preserving alcohol, kept secured in his cave workspace in Hannibal, Missouri. However, when McDowell learned that some locals had been daring each other to break into the cave, and disrespecting his child's remains by opening the copper coffin to scare themselves with ghost stories, he had the body removed for a safer and more traditional burial in the family vault behind the newly built Missouri Medical College. McDowell's unconventional dealing with grief further added to the swirl of lurid rumors around him, including a fable of the body being forcibly removed by angry Hannibal citizens.

Civil War

During the onset of the Civil War, McDowell was recruited as the Surgeon General of the Confederate Army of the West. His medical school was taken over by the Union and temporarily became the Gratiot Street Prison. During this time, there were numerous reports of bones being removed from the building, and whispers that it was haunted spread through the public. McDowell returned to St. Louis in 1865 to find the school in ruins. Together with a colleague, he began to rebuild the Medical College. He died three years later, and is buried in the Bellefontaine Cemetery, together with his other family members, in St. Louis.