A member of a famous Basel family of physicians, Felix Plater, has left us in his autobiography( 19) details of the dissections he witnessed at Montpellier between November 14, 1552, and January 10, 1557, only eleven in number.

How difficult it was at that time to get subjects is shown by the risks they ran in "body-snatching" expeditions, of which he records three.
(19) There is no work from which we can get a better idea of the life of the sixteenth-century medical student and of the style of education and of the degree ceremonies, etc.

Cumston has given an excellent summary of it (Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, 1912, XXIII, 105-113).
And now came the real maker of modern anatomy.

Andreas Vesalius had a good start in life.

Of a family long associated with the profession, his father occupied the position of apothecary to Charles V, whom he accompanied on his journeys and campaigns.