Joseph Nash McDowell

Joseph Nash McDowell (1805–1868) was an American doctor primarily remembered for his grave-digging practices, where he illegally exhumed corpses in order to study human anatomy.

[3] Dissecting cadavers was crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of human anatomy and to enhance and develop more accurate medical practices; however, the public was wary of the idea, believing it to be a desecration of the dead.

They were correct: McDowell had been determined to learn more of what caused her death, but upon receiving a tip-off note warning of the raid, he successfully hid the body, guided (he claimed) by a vision of his dead mother [5] 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.

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.

Although a leading proponent of the importance of science in medicine, McDowell also had strong Spiritual beliefs, fired by a vision of his dead mother, which he believed helped him evade arrest after exhuming a former patient from her grave.

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.

[7] 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.