ANATOMY DURING THE EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE 73 



From the very beginning in the history of human dissection, 

 two forces were at work and were to remain so indefinitely. One 

 c onsisted of a minority group of physicians and students who were 

 subjected to standards and who wanted to dissect. The other was 

 a larger, non-medical class, influenced by superstition and the 

 Church, who were opposed to it. It was in the European nations, 

 the British Isles excluded, where more frictionless systems were 

 evolved. 



In France, cadavers were obtained from civil hospitals, prisons 

 and almshouses after remaining unclaimed for an interval of 

 twenty-four hours. 



The bodies which were available in Germany, in part, were 

 those who had died in prisons, penitentiaries or committed sui- 

 ( ide. They were protected to the extent that friends could pro- 

 vide ordinary burial rites if they paid a certain sum to the funds 

 of the school. Other sources included those who had died as 

 paupers, poor people who had been supported at public cost, those 

 executed and public women. This system functioned so that there 

 was an ample supply of cadavers for anatomic purposes even 

 though the law w^as not rigorously carried out; exhumation was 

 largely unknown. 



Unclaimed bodies were used for dissection in neighboring 

 Austria. They were judged to be such when not claimed forty- 

 eight hours after death. Most activity centered in Vienna where 

 cadavers came from the general hospital. The supply was suffi- 

 cient and there was no recourse to illegal sources. 



In Italy, the governmental regulations were even more lib- 

 eral: all persons who died in hospitals were automatically given 

 up for dissection provided no friend stepped forth with the money 

 necessary to defray funeral expenses. Usually, this source was 

 sufficient to supply all needs. If not, subjects could be obtained 

 from the "deposit" of paupers who died and were buried at public 

 expense. In every parish church in Italy, such specimens were 

 removed either to the dissecting-room or to a pauper burial ground 

 outside of the town. Body snatching was virtually unknown. 



