Under his fostering care the study of anatomy flourished to a remarkable degree at the University of Montpelier. The difficulty hitherto had been that it was very hard to procure bodies for dissecting purposes. It is easy to understand that friends of the dead would always prevent dissections as far as they could. They do so even at the present moment, and there are not many of us who find it in our hearts to blame them over much for it. Few of us are ready to make the sacrifice of our own dead. Even the poor in those days had friends who prevented the cutting up of their remains; for large alms-houses were not presided over by paid officials, but by religious, to whom their poor in their friendlessness appealed as kindred. There were not many prisons, and they were not needed because all felonies were punished by death. Guy de Chauliac realized that here was the best opportunity to procure bodies. Accordingly it was mainly through his instrumentality that a regulation was made handing over the dead bodies of malefactors to the medical school for dissecting purposes. It must be recalled that when he did this the Papal court was at Avignon, in the South of France, and exerted great influence over the University of Montpelier, situate not far away. The reputation of the University of Paris is such that we should not expect her to be backward in this important department of education. As a matter of fact, there is abundant evidence of dissection having been carried on here at the end of the thirteenth century, and the practice was not interrupted at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Lanfranc, the famous surgeon who had studied with William of Salicet in Italy (we have already mentioned both of them and we shall have much {80} to say of them hereafter), taught surgery from a very practical standpoint in Paris, and illustrated his teachings by means of dissections. Lanfranc was succeeded in Paris by Mondeville, whose name is also associated with the practice of dissection by most historians of medicine, and whose teaching was of such a practical character that there can be no doubt that he must have employed this valuable adjunct in his surgical training of students. In general, however, the records of dissecting work and of anatomical development are not near so satisfactory at Paris as in the Italian universities. As is the case in our own day and has always been true, universities were inclined to specialties in the Middle Ages, and the specialty of Paris was Philosophy and Theology. This was choice, however, not compulsion, any more than similar conditions in our own time. The medical school continued to be in spite of this one of the best in the world, though it was not famous for its original work, except in surgery, which is, however, the subject most nearly related to anatomy and the one whose development would seem necessarily to demand attention to anatomy.