William S. Forbes
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
who served as demonstrator of anatomy at Jefferson Medical College. He is known as the "Father of the Anatomical Act" in Pennsylvania.
Born in Falmouth, Virginia
Falmouth, Virginia
Falmouth is an unincorporated community in Stafford County, Virginia, United States. Situated on the north bank of the Rappahannock River at the falls, the community is north of and opposite the city of Fredericksburg. Recognized by the U.S...
, Forbes graduated with a medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in 1852.
In 1882, he was indicted on eight counts by a grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
"for complicity with resurrectionists
Body-snatching
Body snatching is the secret disinterment of corpses from graveyards. A common purpose of body snatching is to sell the corpses for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools...
in the despoliation of graves in Lebanon Cemetery."
Forbes also brought suit against the executors of the estate of Robert Lenox Kennedy to recover $5,000 after he accompanied Kennedy to Europe as his physician, where the family said it was as a friend. The New York Supreme court sided with the Kennedy family.
Forbes is the subject of the 1905 painting Portrait of Professor William S. Forbes by Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
.