Drawing on the personal notebooks of three medical students who studied in Padua in the late 1540s and early 1550s, this essay examines the contents and methods of anatomical teaching of Andreas Vesalius’s successors and in particular that of Antonio Fracanzani and Gabriele Falloppia. These student notes, which have not yet been explored — or indeed known to exist — show, among other things, the outstanding importance of anatomical demonstrations on animals and of private anatomies for a small circle of students. They highlight the prominent place that anatomists accorded to physiological explanations and pathoanatomical findings and, in the case of Falloppia, provide the earliest record of major anatomical discoveries such as the uterine tubes, the ileocaecal valve, and the lacteal vessels. Last but not least, in marked contrast to the common eulogies of the time, the students recorded their professors’ often quite critical assessment of Vesalius and his achievements.
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