The permission to dissect was only another, but a very striking example, of ecclesiastical authority granting privileges to universities beyond those which they could have obtained from the local governments under which they existed. Such permissions, far from showing that the Popes were hampering or prohibiting dissection, prove, on the contrary, that they were securing for educational institutions what local popular prejudice would not have allowed them. That this is the proper way to view this question will be best appreciated by a review of the history of anatomy during the two centuries and a half in which ecclesiastical authorities are said to have prevented or discouraged its development. From this it will be seen very clearly that the nearer to Rome the {53} medical schools were, the more dissection was done in them; that dissection was most common in Rome, at least during the latter part of this period; that the golden age of anatomy developed most luxuriantly in Bologna when that was a Papal city, and in Rome itself; and that in general the Popes must be looked upon as having fostered and patronized the medical sciences and anatomy in every possible way, while there is not the slightest hint anywhere to be found of the ecclesiastical opposition that is supposed to have dominated these centuries of medical history. In concluding this chapter it has seemed worth while to trace the origin of the misinterpretation of Pope Boniface's decretal, which makes it forbid dissection for anatomical purposes as well as the cutting up and boiling of bodies in order to facilitate their removal for long distances for burial. Prof. White quotes with great confidence in the matter the Benedictine Literary History of France as his authority, which he declares to be a Catholic authority. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be quite sufficient to establish the fact that such a misinterpretation must have taken place, for the Benedictines were extremely careful in such matters and were not likely to admit an assertion of this kind, unless they had good foundation for it. The quotation on which Prof. White depends for his declarations in the matter is found in the Sixteenth Volume of the Histoire Litteraire de la France, which runs as follows: "But what was to retard still more (than the prohibition of surgery to the clergy mentioned in the preceding paragraph) was the very ancient prejudice which opposed anatomical dissection as sacrilegious. By a decree inserted in Le Sexte, Boniface VIII. forbade the boiling {54} of bodies in order to obtain skeletons. Anatomists were obliged to go back to Galen for information, and could not study the human body directly, and consequently could not advance the human science of bodily health and therapeutics."