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In 1546, Henry VIII established the position of Regius Professor of Physic at Oxford, a role that remains to this day as the Regius Professor of Medicine.

Portrait of Henry VIII© BBC History

New Statutes were drawn up at the University of Oxford in 1549, requiring for the first time that medical students had to see and perform dissections upon the human body; thus marking a new era of anatomical teaching at Oxford. 

16th century engraving of a dissection titled "A Description of the Little World or Body of Man"© Wellcome Trust

16th century dissection

 

17th century > 

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