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The "Lessons of Anatomy" can be considered as a step of Medicine to Art. For several centuries the exhibition of a corpse's dissection was printed on the title-page of published works. Since the seventeenth century, the "Lessons of Anatomy" became a picture on the title-page in order to highlight the well-known names of the european anatomists. The study is limited to the French Lessons of Anatomy found in books or pictures after the invention of printing.

Since Hippocrates had succeeded to specify the medical science his ethical principles-kindness, deference to human life, privacy of home-were expressed in the so-called Hippocratic Oath. Later some principles of non-discrimination were added, chiefly in the field of the medical research.

Luke, author of the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles was also a physician. As he was born in Antioch he was probably Greek. He travelled with the Apostle Paul. He was born in Antioch he as probably Greek. He travelled with the Aspostle Paul. He was the only gospel writer to have been accurate in his medical analysis, for example to locate a paralysis with precision and use Hippocratic tradition terms. He might have been chosen as the patron saint by the medical corporation at the end of the Middle Ages. From the fifteenth century, the University doctors' first day had been the eighteenth of October, that is St Luke's Day. On their seals, several French medical colleges had an invocation to Saint Luke (with a winged bull at his feet as a symbol) and to the Virgin Mary. Medical corporations and painters' guilds had chapels dedicated to Luke at the end of the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century, Painting Academies were to be called "Saint Luke's" Apart from being famous as a doctor, Luke is known as Virgin Mary's painter. In his gospel he was speaking about her in detail and with tenderness. In Syria and in Rome some paintings were attributed to him. In some fifteenth century engravings, Luke was depicted as a writer of the Gospel or a painter, and sometimes he was dressed as a physician. Nowadays some medical centres are named after him and some French doctors celebrate the eighteenth of October.

Before French Revolution of 1789, Church and University forbid dissections for clerks and Doctors. The first, old Faculty in Bûcherie street had three amphitheatres in 1608 (Jabot), 1617 (Riolan), 1744 (Winslow). Two men taught anatomy, a latin speaking professor and a operating barber-surgeon. To learn anatomy, surgeons students had to hide for dissections in Hôtel-Dieu, masters' houses, or had to steal corpses. The better learning place was the Surgery's College 1515, at 5 medical school street, where two successive amphitheatres were built in 1615 (Pineau) and 1691, and finally at the Royal Surgical Academy at the 12 of the same street. French kings, in order to avoid the Church and University's bad power, created also in 1529 the French College and King's garden in 1673 with Dionis. The chiefly problem was the lack of corpses.

Kings had their own doctors since very ancient times and, in France, it appeared during Clovis reign. The notion "First Doctor of the King" came into sight for the 14th century to the 17th. The "First Doctor of the King" was permanently present next to the him and the royal family. He had some responsibilities in the Kingdom: Direction of the Botanic Gardens, monopoly to nominate justice experts, Direction of Mineral springs and presidency of the Royal Medical Academy. This second category of functions of the First Doctor of the King had undergone limitations in power.

Jean Mésué, a Nestorian scholar, who practised and taught medicine in Bagdad in the tenth century, composed, besides numerous other works, an anthology of aphorisms, the dissemination of which was really extraordinary. There were 132 aphorisms concerning diseases and their treatment according to the doctor and the patients; some of them expressing home truths still valid today. From the East, Jean Mésué's aphorisms passed to the West where they met with amazing good luck, since the two Latin translations and the French translation were copied, then printed many times from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. It is the history of the handing down of this Arabian medical work that the author proposes to retrace in his communication.

Bourges hospital (Hôtel-Dieu de Bourges, 1527) is one of the last to be built in France modeled in the Beaune style (1443) with chapel and wards linked in one line. The former gothic part, built between 1510 and 1527, was later completed by two Renaissance doors (1511 and 1533) and by two classical style wings built after the 1628 plague. Following the Revolution, the gothic part was divided by a floor which somewhat alters the interior appearance of the whole construction. The closing of the general care unit in November 1994 (and transfer of the Bourges General Hospital to new premises) now renders feasible the restoration of the former hospital (Hôtel-Dieu) almost unknown until now, thereby giving it the place it might fully desserve in the architectural and tourist heritage of Bourges.

The cultural topic of malformations is universal by its questionning. Malformations and inherited diseases have been observed and represented since Antiquity. These sculptures and pictures inform about mentalities and behaviours in front of severe birth defects. Dysmorphic syndromes can be identifiable, like achondroplasia, whereas others dwarfisms are arguable. Hermaphroditism has a cosmic meaning. Failing that rational explanation, major abnormalities were considered as monsters of supernatural origin.

After a detailed historical review of the representation of the human skull in art, the authors present a rare example of a reduced marble skull representing as they suggest it, cranio-facial lesions of which they try to explain the etiopathology.

Clinical examination was developed by Hippocrates to understand diseases and patients. This approach was later almost abandoned in the Middle Age before a revival and a period of flowering at the beginning of the XIXth century. The multiplication of other new means of examination again provoked its decline, which has presently stopped, allowing a better balance of clinical practice.

Hippocrates' influence is known in Lyons as soon as the time of the Renaissance, after the discovery of printing. Symphorien Champier and later chiefly Rabelais translated texts of the Cos master and had them edited by the first printers. Hippocrates' influence is moreover evident in Rabelais' work. In the XIXth century, surgeon major Pétrequin published the first book devoted to Hippocrates's surgery. More recently, Professor Pierre Delore has been a convinced supporter of neo-hippocratic medicine of which he developed the chief principles in his works.