Anatomy laws versus body-snatching.

  • Dwight, Thomas, 1843-1911.
Date:
[1896]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anatomy laws versus body-snatching. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The rise of modern anatomy is rightly attributed to Vesalius (1514-1564); but, beyond question, the dissection of human bodies was practised before his time. Mondino dissected in the first part of the fourteenth century, and occasional dissections were made in Italy in the thirteenth. Whether any bodies were at that time openly given for the purposes of dissection is doubtful: that some were irregularly taken seems certain. A teacher and four pupils were tried at Bologna in 1319 on the charge of having taken from the grave, for anatomical purposes, the body of a man who had been executed. Apparently it was of this time that Corradi' wrote : The laws against the desecra- tion of graves were silent without being abolished, and the authorities interfered only if decided violence had been used or a great scandal raised. In the latter half of the fourteenth century laws were passed in various countries apparently allowing a limited number of dissec- tions of executed criminals. It was decreed in the statutes of the University of Bologna, in 1405, that no doctor or student or anyone else shall appropriate a corpse without the permission of the Rector. Later, Ferdinand, the Catholic, allowed physicians at Saragossa to open the bodies of those who died in the hospital if, in their opinion, any useful purpose would be thereby served. The question of the attitude of the Church to dissection is an in- teresting one. If in the full tide of her mediaeval power the Church had opposed dissection, it is inconceivable that it should have been practised at the Italian universities, as it undoubtedly was. The bull of Boniface VIII, in 1300, against eviscerating and boiling the dead— a custom that had sprung up in the Crusades, to admit of the bones of the fallen being returned to their homes—was not in any way levelled at anatomy. Dissection has never been forbidden; on the contrary the theologians of Salamanca at the time of Yesalius pronounced it lawful. Nothing can be produced to the contrary. How strong or general private repugnance to it may have been among ecclesiastics, it is impossible to say. Probably aU shades of opinion were held. In any case, it would appear that dissection was at first tolerated and then more openly favored by law. Indeed, there is some reason to think that the toleration of irregularities may have been excessive; for in 1550 the people of Padua demanded that the laws against the desecration of graves and the stealing of bodies be more strictly administered. The raids of Yesalius on graveyard and gallows seem to have been chiefly, if not wholly, perpetrated in France ; for, during ' Eendiconti del. R. istit. Lombardo, 1873,