These surreal anatomical landscapes raised questions concerning the role of representation in medicine and medical discourse. Similarly, the Leiden anatomy theatre pointed to the rhetorical nature of both medical theory and medical practice. From the publication of Mondino de Luzzi's Anathomia corporis humani in 1316 public dissections involved the reading of an anatomy text by a lector while a surgeon performed the dissection. By the sixteenth century Vesalius had combined the performance of the dissection with the task of explaining the process. The anatomist had, in effect, become a public performer. This role was confirmed by the design of anatomy theatres in Padua and Bologna which imitated theatres used for the staging of plays. At times these theatres were used for both purposes and, in Bologna, the annual public dissection was held at carnival time when maskers were allowed to attend. In Holland one of the earliest locations for the Amsterdam anatomy theatre was housed in St. Margaret's Church, directly opposite the 'Princenhof' which was also known as the 'New or Little Meat Hall'. In Rembrandt's 'Anatomy of Dr. Nicholas Tulp' William Heckscher quotes a poem taken from an engraving of the church which reads

Title: The two Meat Halls. The two meat halls which you see here are well equipped with beautiful "meat", beautiful inside and out, and so much of it that one hardly knows where it all goes. Come on, little ladies, if you feel like investing your money; buy as much as your heart desires - from this kind of "flesh" your spouses won't grow horns...Do you desire to know what people there are upstairs? Those are the surgeons who make flesh wounds and who are trained in the noble art. At the same time this is the peaceful meeting place of Rhetoricians. While some will bare the wounds of man's body, the others try to cure man's soul.