“We murder to dissect”                                              

Dissecting the dead has been a controversial issue since antiquity.  In ancient Egypt preparing the deceased to his afterlife’s journey by dissecting and embalming was a privilege and duty but elsewhere it was a taboo.  Dissecting and thus, “desecrating” the dead was a taboo since the Greek golden period until this very day in some cultures.  This is the reason that the study of human anatomy had to wait until Leonardo Da Vinci (that had to hide his dissections) and Medical Anatomy & Physiology was based very often on imagination, not proven theories and animals.  As soon as the formal study of Medicine started to involve anatomy the dissections (of executed criminals in most cases) became a show not only for the profession (see a dissection scene from the 17^th century copper engraving).  In the 18-19 centuries the demand (by anatomists) for human corpses for dissection was so great that fresh bodies were stolen from their graves and even murders of homeless and lonely people were committed for their precious bodies (see c. 1800 copper engraving).  Even today, the enormous restrictions imposed by the religious institutions on Post Mortem dissections deprive the treating physician of the so important feed-back of what was the real reason of his patient’s death.