ABSTRACT
An unhealthy veneration for authority was characteristic of late mediaeval thought, in medicine as in other branches of philosophy. Indeed, although the new experimental anatomy of the sixteenth century soon proved that the ancients, and Galen in particular, had made notable errors, there were still a few diehards who could not shake off this attitude at the end of the seventeenth century. Discoveries in physiology, because they were more dependent on reasoning and less on visible evidence, tended to arouse differences of opinion, and to take a long time to gain general acceptance, but even the methods of the anatomists were a model to imitate wherever possible. Although the number of books in English on anatomy, or aspects of it, suggests that there was much interest in it at quite a popular level, opportunities for anatomical discovery, and even basic instruction, were particularly limited in England.
