Any sheriff, coroner, keeper or superintendent of a county poorhouse, public hospital, county jail, or state institution shall surrender the dead bodies of persons required to be buried at the public expense, to any physician or surgeon, to be by him used for the advancement of anatomical science, preference being given to medical schools in this state, for their use in the instruction of medical students. If the deceased person during his last sickness requested to be buried, or if within thirty days after his death some person claiming to be a relative or a responsible officer of a church organization with which the deceased at the time of his death was affiliated requires the body to be buried, his body shall be buried.
[1959 c 23 § 1; 1953 c 224 § 2; 1891 c 123 § 2; RRS § 10027. Formerly RCW 68.08.070.]