Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/503

of Galen; Second year: Lectures on the subjects of wounds and ulcers, in accordance with the teachings of Galen and Hippocrates and the Arabian medical writers; Third year: Lectures on fractures and dislocations, in accordance with the teachings of Galen and Hippocrates. Then, if sufficient time is available during this last year of the course, a certain amount of anatomy is to be taught (during the winter season) from Galen's writings on this subject. In the summer time the subject of simple remedies may be taken up advantageously, and botanical demonstrations may also be given." Von Gurlt quotes Koelliker as his authority for the statement that throughout the seventeenth century the medical and surgical teaching at the University of Wuertzburg was very defective, "almost nothing worthy of mention being accomplished during that long period in the departments of anatomy and physiology." In the University of Basel, Switzerland, which was founded in 1460, medical teaching was as barren as it was in all the German universities at that early period. It was only in 1542 that the first public dissection of a human body took place there. Vesalius was visiting the city at that time for the purpose of superintending the printing of his great work on anatomy, and the university authorities availed themselves of the opportunity to secure from him not only this single demonstration, but also in addition a course of lectures on anatomy. Fifteen years later, Felix Platter, a native of Basel and a man of exceptional ability (see sketch on pp. 332 et seq.), made the first postmortem examination known to have been made in that city. Two years later still (1559), following in the footsteps of Vesalius, he made a public dissection of a criminal's corpse in the Church of St. Elizabeth. From 1581 onward, with occasional omissions, a public dissection of the corpse of a criminal was made by the professor of anatomy once every year. In 1590 the question was discussed by the Faculty whether it "might not also be practicable to secure from the hospital, for dissection, an occasional corpse." The first body obtained from this source was dissected in 1604, but it was not until 1669 that a second one was avail-