estified that they recognized the body
of Pasino in the school and students occupied with its dissection. If
evidence for the zeal of the medical students of that time for
dissection were needed, surely we have it in the testimony at this
trial. At a time when body-snatching has become a criminal offence
usually there have been many repeated occurrences of it before the
parties are brought to trial, so that it seems not unlikely that a good
many dissections of illegally secured bodies were being done at Bologna
at this time.

We know of a regulation of the University in force at this time, which
required the teachers at the University to do an anatomy or dissection
for students if they secured a body for that purpose. The students seem
to have used all sorts of influence, political, monetary, diplomatic,
and ecclesiastical, in order to secure the bodies of criminals.
Sometimes when they failed in their purpose they waited until after
burial and then took the body without leave. When we recall the awfully
deterrent condition in which bodies must have been that were thus
provided for dissecting purposes, it is easy to understand that the
enthusiasm of the students for dissection must have been at a very high
pitch. Certainly it was far higher than at the present day, when, in
spite of the fact that our dissecting-rooms have very few of the
old-time dangers and unpleasantnesses, dissection is only practised with
assiduity if special care is exercised in requiring attendance and
superintending the work of the department.

In my book on "The Popes and Science" I have gathered the traditions
relating to Mondino's assistants in the chair of anatomy at Bologna.
They furnish abundant evidence of the fact that dissections, far from
being uncommon, must have been not at all infrequent at the north
Italian universities at this time. Curiously enough, one of these
assistants was a young woman who, as was not infrequently the custom at
this time in the Italian universities, was matriculated as a student at
Bologna. She took up first philosophy, and afterwards anatomy, under
Mondino. While it is not generally realized, co-education was quite
common at the Italian universities of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and at no time since the foundation of the universities has a
century passed in Italy without distinguished women occupying
professors' chairs at some of the Italian universities. This young
woman, Alessandra Giliani,