g gone at night time to the
cemetery of the church of San Barnada, outside the San Felice gate,
and to have sacrilegiously violated the grave in which was buried
the body of a certain Pasino who had been hung on the gallows near
the Ponte di Reno. It was charged that the students had taken up the
body and carried it to the school of the parish of San Salvatore,
near the pharmacy of {49} Giacomo de Guido, where Master Alberto
(Zancari) was teaching. There were witnesses who affirmed that they
had seen the body of Pasino in the school and the students and
others intent upon dissecting it. It was the sixth of December when
the arrests were made, but the final outcome of the trial is not
stated."

Surely all this must be considered sufficient evidence to show that
Pope Boniface's bull neither forbade dissection, nor was
misinterpreted as prohibiting any practice in connection with
anatomical investigation. It is not enough for President White,
however, for after the publication of my original article in the
Medical Library and Historical Journal on The Popes and Anatomy, and
another article on Pope John XXII. and the Supposed Bull against
Chemistry, President White wrote thus in reply: "Dr. Walsh takes up
the decretal of Boniface VIII., in 1300, and endeavors to show that,
so far from forbidding dissection, it had quite a different tenor, and
that at sundry universities in Italy and at the University at
Montpelier, in France, dissection was permitted and most openly
practiced. This seems to me very disingenuous. The decretal of
Boniface was construed universally as prohibiting dissections for any
purpose whatever."

For President White, then, the publication of the text of the bull is
only an _endeavor_ to show that, so far from forbidding dissection, it
had quite a different tenor. This endeavor seems to him very
disingenuous(!) It matters not what evidence there may be for
dissection, or lack of evidence as to ecclesiastical opposition, the
decretal of Boniface was _construed universally_ as prohibiting any
dissections for any purpose whatever. All history must yield before
the reiteration of the assertion {50} that the Popes did forbid
dissection, and that there was no anatomy during the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, except such as by chance, in some
way or other, succeeded in evading the Church regulations. It simply
must have been so. President White has said it. For anyone to