rs. Roth says:

"In the pre-Vesalian period the dissection of the human body was
practiced, according to the terms of Frederick's law, for the
instruction of those about to become physicians and surgeons. The
natural place for this school anatomy--for a dissection was called
anatomia, or, erroneously, anatomia publica--was at the universities
and the medical schools. Apart from teaching institutions, however,
public anatomies were held in Strasburg and in Venice. Their purpose
was the instruction of the practicing medical personnel of these
towns. Dissections which were not made for general instruction were
called private anatomies. They were performed for the benefit of a
few physicians, or students, or magistrates, or artists. Private
anatomies began to have special importance only toward the end of
the pre-Vesalian period (this would be about the end of the
fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth century). It is a
play of chance that the first historical reference to a dissection
concerns a private anatomy, one undertaken for the purpose of making
a legal autopsy. This was made in Bologna in the year 1302 (two
years after the decretal supposed to forbid dissection). A certain
Azzelino died with unexpected suddenness, after his physicians had
visited him once. A magistrate suspected poison and commissioned two
physicians and three surgeons to determine the cause of death. It
was found that death resulted from natural causes. (As I have said,
it would appear that this was not an unusual procedure, for unless
medical autopsies had been done before, it does not seem probable
that this method of {73} determining the cause of death would have
been so readily taken up.)

"Thirteen years later there is an account of the dissection of two
female bodies, in January and March of the year 1315, performed by
Mundinus." (We have already seen that the fact that the two female
bodies should be especially mentioned, though taken by some
historians of medicine to indicate that Mundinus had done but few
dissections, will not stand such an interpretation, in the light of
the evidence that he had dissected many male bodies at least, as his
text-book of anatomy indeed makes very clear. These two dissections
of females happened only to have special features that made them
noteworthy.) "A few years later (1319) there is a remarkable
document which tells the