If we turn now for a moment to give consideration to continental activity during the same period, there is no difficulty in observing the superiority of publications abroad. In 1543 the _Fabrica_ of Vesalius was published, in 1545 the _De Dissectione_ of Rivière and Estienne, in 1555 the revised and much improved second edition of the _Fabrica_, in 1556 _Composicion del Cuerpo Humano_ of Valverde, and in 1559 the _De Re Anatomica_ of Colombo. It is little wonder that these foreign texts overwhelmed the English market and prevented any initiative which might have led to the publication of any but the most rudimentary manuals, presuming that there was in England anyone who had pursued the study of anatomy sufficiently to be in a position to compete with the continental authorities. On the other hand, the superiority of the foreign publications owed part of that superiority to the fact that they were the work of much better educated physicians who had undertaken the study of anatomy, whereas in England the subject was yet very largely under the control of the less learned and less articulate surgeons who thought of anatomy more as a limited body of technical information required for surgery rather than a field of knowledge to be studied for itself and capable of indefinite expansion. David Edwardes had sought to set medicine on the right course, but to no avail. While in time the Faculties of Medicine in the two universities would pay some lip-service to anatomy, yet some considerable time was to pass before they became genuinely interested in the subject. In 1549 a royal examination of the Oxford statutes led to a declaration that they were ‘antiquated, semi-barbarous and obscure’, and new ones were substituted. In regard to medicine it was declared that before receiving the degree of Bachelor of Medicine the student must see two anatomical dissections, and himself perform two dissections before receiving his licence to practice. Before receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine he was required to observe two or three more dissections.[46] This, however, seems more likely to have been the ideal than the reality and echoes a similar but normally unfulfilled requirement in fifteenth-century Paris. It is more likely that the frequency with which anatomy was conducted at Oxford would have depended upon the particular interest of the Professor of Medicine, such as Walter Bayley (1529-93) who became Regius Professor of Medicine in 1561 and who at his death left his ‘skeleton of bones in Oxford’ to his successor in the chair.[47] However, no Reader in Anatomy was appointed at Oxford until 1624. Indeed, the founder of the readership, Richard Tomlins, recognized the situation in his grant by noting that the study of anatomy was