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MEDICAL TEACHING. 401
of Bologna stated that, even in families Of good position,
permission was readily granted him to perform a dissection
where it was a question of determining the cause of a
disease. In other places the neglect of anatomical demonstration
was caused not so much by a scarcity of bodies as
by the idleness and ignorance of the professors. In Prague
during a space of 22 years (1690-1712) only three dissections
were performed.* In Vienna during the year 1741
not one single actus anatomicus took place ; when the departmental
professor was blamed by the Government for
this, amongst other excuses he put forward that of not being
supported by a prosector.f The medical faculty of Ingolstadt
even proposed in 1753 to abolish the professorship
of anatomy, considering that it would be best to begin to
learn this science after the completion of medical study,
while engaged in the practice of the profession.! But
arrangements were made in most of the German states in
the 18th century to remedy this constant lack of subjects
which pressed heavily upon the schools of anatomy. In
1716 the electoral government of Saxony decreed that the
Corpses of all criminals condemned to death in the district
of Leipzig should at the request of the medical faculty be
handed over to the dissecting-room without delay. The
jpquirements of the anatomical school at Wittenburg were
Ca|.ed for in the same way. A regulation was made in
1323 that the bodies also of persons who had been drowned
or found dead from any cause—so long as it was not a
question of the " honoratiores"—or of suicides or of
criminals who died in prison should be made use of for the
purposes of anatomy; it w r as further arranged that the
poor people, who were cared for at the public expense in
the infirmaries, should, in the event of their death in such
institutions and of their friends not being able to afford the
expense of burying them, be delivered over to the medical
* HYRTL: Geschichte der Anatomie in Prag, 1841, S. 26.
f ROSAS op. tit. ii, 256.
X PRANTL op. cit. i, 607.
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