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The practice of taking apart (dissecting) dead people or animals in order to discover what caused them to die, to learn more about disease or injury, or simply to see what they looked like inside, goes back way before we have any written records of such practices. It's possible, but by no means certain, that animals were dissected for investigative purposes before humans.

An autopsy, also known as a post-mortem examination, today refers equally to the examination of a dead human or of an animal. The investigative dissection of an animal is also known as a 'necropsy'. The word 'autopsy' comes to English from Greek and means 'eye-witnessing', or 'seeing for oneself'.

The first recorded autopsies go back past the third millennium BC (around 3000 BC or BCE).

Modern concepts of autopsy date back to the eighteenth century, and the first written compilation of procedures, observations and conclusions was 'The Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy' - 'De Sedibus et Causis Morborum per Anatomen Indagatis' - written by the Italian physician Giovanni Morgagni and published in 1769.

The Roman soldier and politician, (Gaius) Julius Caesar, was autopsied by Roman medical officials following his murder in 44 BC (BCE) and the ancient Romans were among the first to employ autopsies as part of official legal proceedings.

See the links below for more information on autopsies.

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