 At the time Hogarth made the engravings, this right was not enshrined in law, but the surgeons still removed bodies when they could.A tattoo on his arm identifies Tom Nero, and the rope still around his neck shows his method of execution.The dissectors, their hearts hardened after years of working with cadavers, are shown to have as much feeling for the body as Nero had for his victims; his eye is put out just as his horse's was, and a dog feeds on his heart, taking a poetic revenge for the torture inflicted on one of its kind in the first plate.