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TEACHING IN ANATOMY. 249
such use of the bodies of persons whose homes had been in
Bologna* The same conditions obtained in Padua,
Ferrara, and Pisa.f In general, care was taken to devote
to anatomical investigation the bodies of criminals on
whom the punishment of death had been carried out. The
populace, as in the ages of antiquity, regarded the mutilation
and cutting to pieces of the dead body as a desecration,
to which one was at liberty to expose only those
persons who, by their execrable crimes, had drawn general
contempt upon themselves. As the demands of science
increased, this method of getting dead bodies did not
suffice, and people were obliged to find out how to procure
them in other ways. But even then the principle was
adhered to of employing for this degrading purpose (as it
was thought to be in the opinion of the publie) only the
bodies of strangers, or, if of natives, then only those of
lowly origin. If in Pisa the dead bodies of the burgesses
of the town, and of the students and doctors, with the
consent of their relatives, were used for this purpose it was
an exception, and is probably explained by the democratic
spirit which prevailed there at the time.J
Practical teaching in anatomy was developed in the
universities of other countries at a later period, and to a
much smaller extent than in the academies of Italy. Not
until the 15th century were such demonstrations commenced
in Paris. In Prague, anatomical dissections took
place from the year 1460, after the medical faculty there
had, by a present, come into possession of a house of its
own.§ In Vienna, Professor GALEAZZO DI S. SOFIA, who
had been called thither from Padua, instituted in 1404 the
first anatomical demonstration, a male subject being given
up to him for this purpose. It took place in the town
hospital, and lasted eight days. At the conclusion the
* Statut. v. 1442, Rubr. 19, in CORRADI op. cit. p. 648.
t CORRADI op. cit. p. 638.
X FABRONI : Hist. Acad. Pisan., Pisa 1792, T. ii, 73.
§ HYRTI. : Geschichte der Anatomic in Prag., 1841, S. 9.