In the late nineteenth century a shortage of corpses for the medical faculty led to a conflict that went beyond the hospital walls. Under the influence of public protest the number of bodies that could be used in the anatomical theatre decreased. Pathologists-anatomists tried to secure the availability of bodies by redefining the autopsy. According to them, the autopsy, unlike the dissection, was a decent operation that took funerary rituals and the integrity of the body into account. The autopsy also led to interesting scientific results, whereas the dissection merely served educational purposes. Using the late nineteenth century body shortage as a case study, this article offers a new perspective on the formation of medical disciplines, as well as on the practices of anatomists. In a very concrete way – during the opening and the closing up of the corpse – the autopsy was a compromise in which the practices, goals and internal hierarchies of medicine were reconciled with a changing society.