John Staige Davis was a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia from 1847 until 1885. Born in Albemarle County, he was the son of, a law professor at the university who was shot and killed by a student there in 1840. The younger Davis practiced medicine in western Virginia before joining the faculty himself in 1847. Preferring a practical approach to anatomy instruction, and thwarted by a Virginia law that prohibited the disinterment of dead bodies, he resorted to grave robbing. Most of the bodies came from African American and pauper cemeteries, others from executed convicts. In 1859, Davis requested the bodies of men sentenced to be hanged after ‘s raid on Harpers Ferry but received none. During the (1861–1865), Davis served as a Confederate surgeon in . He died in 1885.