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MEDICAL TEACHING. 327
medical faculties rules were laid down that every year one or
more anatomical demonstrations should take place, and that
the authorities should provide the bodies required. But the
authorities were not always equal to their duties in this
respect and, even when this was the case, the material used
for study was scarcely sufficient for teaching purposes, and
still less did it supply the wants of anatomical investigators
in the pursuit of their researches.
It was therefore not unnatural that, baffled in obtaining
material in a legal way, anatomists sought to provide it in
another. Purchase and theft of bodies became consequently
a not uncommon practice and one regarded by the magis­
trates with a certain toleration, when the objects in view were
connected with science. But it seems to have been some­
times carried on too openly and also to have led to abuses
with which it was necessary to interfere. In 1550 the
people of Padua demanded that the laws against the dese­
cration of graves and the stealing of bodies should be more
^strictly administered.* Religious now took the place of
social prejudices in opposing the practice of dissection.
Only through the good will of intelligent magistrates
and the powerful support of the distinguished lords who
interested themselves in anatomy, was it possible for
investigators to find the material necessary for their
studies. FALLOPIUS had the opportunity, in a single year,
of dissecting seven human bodies; REALDO COLOMBO
brought the number up to 14T FELIX PLATTER states
that in the course of thirty years' work he dissected more
than 50 bodies;| a number unusually large for that time.
VESALIUS during his successful activity in the academies
of Padua, Pisa and Bologna had as many subjects as he
wished; they were delivered to him from the scaffolds and
from^ the hospitals. The judges had the kindness to
* CORRADI op. cit. p. 642.
f R. COLOMBO op. cit. xv, p. 262.
J F. PLATERUS: De corp. hum. structura et usu, Basil. 1583, in the dedication
after the title-page.