Some curious customs prevailed. In teaching anatomy, while the learned teachers explained the parts as exposed, the dissections were left to barbers as being unworthy of an educated medical gentleman. While the cadavers were mainly the corpses of executed criminals, it was thought that before and after each special dissection religious ceremonies were appropriate, and such were often held; it was also believed that all who came in contact with such a corpse{150} would be made disreputable unless it were itself first made reputable; hence the professors first read aloud a decree to that effect from the magistrate, and then, by order of the senate of the faculty, stamped upon the breast of the corpse the seal of the university. The body was next carried into the anatomical hall, and the cover of the box in which it had been transported was returned to the executioner, who remained at some distance for this purpose. If the corpse was one that had been decapitated, during these solemn ceremonies the head was placed between its legs. Finally, an entertainment with music, often furnished by itinerant actors, was given. But this folly was gradually discontinued, and by the second half of the sixteenth century public dissection was performed without recourse to such mummeries. The price of skeletons in those days was high; the University of Hiedelberg, in 1669, paid seventy-two dollars for one. The practitioners of the sixteenth century were often quite as roving as the students and professors, though those who held positions as State physicians were bound by contract to a fixed residence for a certain time. In 1519 the State physician of Heilbronn received a salary of twenty-one dollars per year and his firewood, but could not leave the city over night without permission of the burgomaster. Medical attendants of the King of Spain were required to kneel down when they felt the king's pulse. There were few physicians who acquired wealth, although Fabricius ab Aquapendente left a fortune of two hundred thousand ducats.