0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

400 RECENT TIMES.
when they had no dead bodies, made use of living men in
tfeeir investigations. The 'ill-feeling thus engendered was
still more increased by the illegal way in which bodies often
came into the possession of the schools of anatomy. In
Jena criminals condemned to death used to entreat the
favour, before they were^given over to the hangman, that
•stheir bodies should not be delivered to Professor ROLFINK ;
and the country-folk in the district around Jena had the
graves of their friends watched in order to prevent their
bodies being " rolfinked.'J. J. BECHER had to flee from
Wiirzburg in 1661, because he had dissected the body of a
woman who had,been executed.* In Berlin and Lyons the
anatomical schools were stormed by the excited populace,
and the anatomists were roughly handled.f Similar causes
led to the destruction of the dissecting-room at Edinburgh
by the mob in 17254 Even at the present day this prejudice
has hardly disappeared. A few years ago the beneficed
clergy of Vienna proffered a request to the magistrates^
that their corpses should not be dissected.
Fortunately people were not everywhere so narrow^
minded. ' VlEUSSENS had the opportunity at Montpellier op
dissecting over 500 bodies. LiEUTAUD could rely upoft^
1,200 reports of dissections. HALLER states that while "
was teaching in Gottingen (1736-1753) he performed abdt
350 dissections ; the dissecting-room there which was unc
his charge received annually fromc3o to 40 subjects.§ T^e
same favourable conditions obtained at Strassburg; in tha
winter of 1725 thirty bodies, and in that of 1760 as many aj>
sixty bodies were dissected at the anatomical department
there. || v At Paris, Leyden, and some Italian academies the
greatest possible desire was shown to provide the anatomical
schools with the necessary material of study. ALBERTINI
* K6LL1KER op. cit. S. II.
f J. P. FRANK: System der medicinishen Polizei, Wien 1817, vi, 2, S. 60
Anm.
X A. GRANT : The Story of the University of Edinburgh, London 1884.
§ A. VALENTIN in the Memoir on A. v. HALLER, Bern* J87*7, S. 72.
|| WlEGER Op, tit. S. 82,