deny it
is to question his historical infallibility. Only those who are
disingenuous will dare to do so.

It is true, he grants there were some permits to dissect given, but
these were wrung from the unwilling hands of the ecclesiastical
authorities, and are only proofs of their opposition, not at all of
their toleration of dissection. There is no limit to which Professor
White will not go in order to maintain his proposition that the Popes
did forbid anatomy, and that there was no anatomical investigation
during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here, for
instance, is a paragraph from Professor White's answer which shows
very strikingly one method of arguing with regard to a question of
major significance in the history of education as well as of science,
and especially of medicine, during the Middle Ages. Comments on it are
entirely unnecessary:

"And now, as to Dr. Walsh's statement that dissection was permitted
by Popes and ecclesiastical authorities in universities. His
argument in the matter is an excellent example of Jesuitism. It is
true that under the pressure of the developing science of medicine,
sundry civil and ecclesiastical authorities did, from time to time,
issue permits allowing an occasional dissection, at rare intervals,
here and there; as, for example, the permission given to the
University of Lerida, in 1391, to dissect one dead criminal every
three years, and to sundry other universities to dissect one or two
human {51} bodies each year. It is a fact of which we have ample
testimony, that Mundinus, the great anatomist preceding Vesalius,
only dissected three human bodies with his classes during his entire
career. So far from effectually helping anatomy, these permissions
served really to fasten the idea upon the European mind that
dissection to any considerable extent by anatomical investigators
ought not to be allowed, and, as a matter of fact, it was not until
Vesalius, _in spite of theological opposition, braved calumny,
persecution, and possibly death, that this ecclesiastical barrier to
investigation was broken through._" (Italics ours.)

Since Professor White has insisted so much on the significance of
these permissions, a discussion of them will not be out of place.
There are records of a certain small number of permissions to dissect
having been granted by the Popes to various universities during the
fourteenth and fifteenth cent