[The development of anatomy].

Doctors, particularly surgeons, realise the enormous importance of good knowledge of human anatomy today. It was not so in the past when doctors showed little or no interest for human anatomy for centuries. Dissections of the human body, necessary to study human anatomy, were either forbidden or limited to the corpses of criminals on whom capital punishment was carried out. The authors give a chronology of the development of human anatomy until 19. century when dissections of the human body became almost universally regulated with positive legislation. After the "golden age of surgery" began in 1870. surgeons gave an enormous contribution to anatomy.