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With forceps in his right hand Tulp holds the muscles and tendons of the arm that control the movement of the hand, while the bent fingers of his left hand demonstrate an aspect of their wondrous action.
By 1600, the surgical dissection of corpses in The Netherlands had been made into official, though not frequent, occasions, with fixed procedures controlled by the guild. It was forbidden to hold a dissection, either in public or private, without the guild's permission, and the corpse had to be that of an executed criminal. The only dissection known to have taken place in Amsterdam in 1632 was on 31 January, when the criminal was Adriaen Adriaensz. Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1593-1674) was chief anatomist and lecturer of the Surgeons' Guild of Amsterdam from 1629 to 1653.
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