共用题干 第三篇

The Body Thieves

In the early nineteenth century in Britain,many improvements were being made in the
world of medicine.Doctors and surgeons were becoming more knowledgeable about the
human body.Illnesses that had been fatal a few years before were now curable.However,
surgeons had one problem.They needed dead bodies to cut up,or dissect（解剖）.This
was the only way that they could learn about the flesh and bones inside the body,and the
only way to teach new surgeons to carry out operations.
The job of finding these dead bodies was carried out by an unpleasant group of people
called "body snatchers". They went into graveyards（墓地）at night and, using wooden
shovels to make less noise,dug up any recently buried bodies.Then they took the bodies
to the medical schools and sold them.A body could be sold for between ￡5 and ￡10,
which was a lot of money at that time.The doctors who paid the body snatchers had an
agreement with them一they never asked any questions.They did not desire to know where
the bodies came from,as long as they kept arriving.
The most famous of these body snatchers were two men from Edinburgh called William
Burke and Wil!iam Hare.Burke and Hare were different because they did not」ust dig up
bodies from graveyards.They got greedy and thought of an easier way to find bodies.
Instead of digging them up,they killed the poorer guests in Hare"s small hotel.Dr Knox,
the respected surgeon they worked for,never asked why all the bodies they brought him
had been strangled（勒死）.
For many years Burke and Hare were not caught because,unsurprisingly,the bodies
of their victims were never found by the police.They were eventually arrested and put on
trial in 1829.The judge showed mercy to Hare and he was released but Burke was found
guilty and his punishment was to be hanged.Appropriately,his body was given to the
medical school and he ended up on the dissecting table,just like his victims.In one small
way，justice was done.
Now,over 1 50 years later,surgeons do not need the help of criminals to learn their
skills.However,the science of surgery could not have developed without their rather
gruesome（令人毛骨惊然的）help. The body snatchers used wooden shovels because