nvince anyone that all that Professor White has said with regard to
the supposed effect of the misinterpretation of Boniface's decree is
without foundation in the history of anatomy. Within twenty years {75}
after the bull was issued dissection was practiced to such an extent,
that body-snatching became so common that there were prosecutions for
it, and public dissections seem to have been held every year in the
universities of Italy during most of the fourteenth century.

[Footnote 9: Corradi Dello Studio e dell' Insegnamento dell' Anatomia
in Italia nel Medio Evo ed in parte del Cinquecento, Padova, 1873.]

De Renzi [Footnote 10] gives an interesting account of the methods by
which material was obtained for dissection purposes before governments
made any special provision for this purpose. Naturally, the rifling of
graves was resorted to by students intensely interested in the subject
of anatomy. The first criminal prosecution for body-snatching on
record is in 1319, when some students brought a body to one Master
Albert, a lecturer in medicine at the University at Bologna, and he
dissected it for them. At this time, according to the statutes of the
university, teachers of anatomy were bound to make a dissection if the
students supplied the body. The whole party were brought to trial for
this offence, though they do not seem to have suffered any severe
penalty for their violation of the laws. At this time, according to De
Renzi, there was a rage for dissection and many bodies were yearly
obtained surreptitiously for the purpose.

[Footnote 10: De Renzi Storia della Medicina in Italia, Napoli.
1845-49, Vol. II., p. 247.]

With regard to the bodies of condemned criminals, people began to
countenance the procedure, and while unwilling as yet to give them
freely, allowed the bodies to be taken. Corradi, quoted by Puschmann,
says "that laws against the desecration of graves, without being
abolished, became a dead letter. The authorities interfered only if
decided violence had been used or a great scandal raised. Such
consequences were likely to follow only if, in the ardor of their
enthusiasm for anatomical knowledge, students rifled the graves of
well-known {76} persons or took the bodies of those whose relatives
discovered the desecration and proceeded against the marauders by
legal measures."

At the Italian universities after the middle of the fourteenth century
there is abundant evidence for perfect freedom with