...Andreas Vesalius--with friend.Dissection of the human body was illegal, in most cases, up until the 19th century. Anatomists had to "acquire" specimens in various ways, usually through grave robbing. In some locations it was legal to dissect criminals who had been executed; this made for some rather macabre post-hanging or -beheading scenes in which the anatomists' agents would fight over still-warm corpses (and in some cases heads) at the foot of the scaffold or gibbet. It's not hard to imagine situations in which pieces of the bodies would be "parceled out"--for a price.
Things got so bad in Victorian England that families posted guards at graves. As might be expected, this often expedited the "disappearance" of the bodies as the anatomists paid the guards more than the families did....
The history of science is filled with people who took chances in order to extend knowledge. In the end we should be grateful that they did, and still do. We are the beneficiaries.
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