Though women were prohibited from attending medical school, they seem to have attended some dissections, as we have seen in the etching of the Leiden anatomy theatre. On a more functional level, midwives necessarily acquired practical anatomical knowledge. This ivory figure with a detachable stomach and removable organs is not anatomically precise enough to have been used in teaching medical students, and seems likelier to have been produced to reassure pregnant women by giving them some understanding of the internal workings of their own bodies.