Between 1550 and 1750 all over Europe post-mortems were carried out on those who had died of a disease. In households, courts, hospitals and the legal arena, bodies were cut up and observed for a variety of purposes, and yet this practice and the knowledge it generated have virtually disappeared from a historiography that has instead focused either on the anatomical investigations of healthy bodies or on bedside practice. Dissections in the pre-Morgagni period still tend to be seen as failed attempts to create what could only take place with the emergence of pathological anatomy in the Paris...