nother sense for his own purposes because
of a false significance attached to it in the popular mind, we have a
special name for him.

The whole matter, however, resolves itself into the simple question,
"Was dissection prevented and anatomical investigation hampered after
the issuance of the bull?" This is entirely a question of fact. The
history of anatomy will show whether dissection ceased or not at this
time. Now if those who so confidently make assertions in this matter
had ever gone to a genuine history of anatomy, they would have learned
at once that, far from this being the time when dissection ceased, the
year 1300 is almost exactly the date for which we have the first
definite evidence of the making of dissections and the gradual
development of anatomical investigation by this means in connection
with the Italian universities. This is such a curious coincidence that
I always call it to the attention of medical students in lecturing on
this subject.

{37}

The first dissection of which we have definite record, Roth tells us
in his life of Vesalius, was a so-called private anatomy or dissection
made for medico-legal purposes. Its date is the year 1302, within two
years after the bull. A nobleman had died and there was a suspicion
that he had been poisoned. The judge ordered that an autopsy be made
in order to determine this question. Unfortunately we do not know what
the decision of the doctors in the case was. We know only that the
case was referred to them. Now it seems very clear that if this had
not been a common practice before, the court would not have adopted
this measure, apparently as a matter of judicial routine, as seems to
have been the case in this instance. Had it been the first time that
it was done instead of having the record of the transaction preserved
only by chance, any mention of it at all would have appeared so
striking to the narrator, that he would have been careful to tell the
whole story, and especially the decision reached in the matter.

After this, evidence of dissection accumulates rapidly. During the
second decade of the century Mondino, the first writer on anatomy, was
working at Bologna. We have the records of his having made some
dissections in connection with his university teaching there, and
eventually he published a text-book on dissection which became the
guide for dissectors for the next two centuries. Within five years
after this we have a story of students being h