ANATOMY DURING THE EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE 81 



the corpse and that barbers were not punished for performing 

 their duties (Bailey, '11; Franchini, '32; McMurrich, '30). 



b. The University of Padua. This university was another 

 which quickly rose to anatomical prominence. Padua was in- 

 corporated into the Republic of Venice in 1405 and was prob- 

 ably not so closely supervised by the Church as the school at 

 Boloona. Dissection was officially recognized there in 1429, when 

 a male criminal was anatomized. Bertapaglia, a surgeon of the 

 period, tells of attending similar events in 1439 and 1440. Mon- 

 tagnana witnessed fourteen post-mortems in Padua in the year of 

 1444. A magnificent anatomical theatre, which became widely 

 known, was built in 1446, some say at the personal expense of 

 Fabricius (1537-1617), others on the general basis of raising funds 

 w hich were quickly subscribed. Harvey was later to study human 

 anatomy in this building. It is definitely known that demonstra- 

 tions were made in 1520, 1532, 1536 and 1537. 



The most famous investigator to teach there was Andreas 

 Vesalius (1514-1564) whose story will be taken up separately. 

 He was succeeded in 1544, by Realdus Columbus who anatomized 

 as many as fourteen bodies in a twelve month period; he also 

 published a treatise on the lesser circulation, De Re Anatomica, 

 in 1559, the year of his death. He believed the blood was aerated 

 in the lungs and that there were no pores in the heart septum. 

 Columbus was followed by Gabriel Fallopius (1523-1562). It was 

 at this time that anatomists began to dissect on their own, taking 

 over this duty from the barbers (Ball, '10). 



c. The University of Montpellier. In France, the University 

 of Montpellier was without question the pioneer in anatomical 

 studies. Permission was granted in 1376, by King Louis D'Anjou 

 to perform a dissection on the body of one executed criminal 

 annually. This was about 200 years before Sylvius introduced the 

 art in Paris. The citizens of Montpellier had shown themselves 

 to be freer, broader and more independent in thought than the 

 population of Paris. 



The information on succeeding events in Montpellier is 

 fragmentary. Chronologically, it is as follows: in 1532, Rabelais, 

 a noted French physician, satirist and humorist, is known to have 

 dissected there. Between 1552 and 1557, only five or six official 



