During Alcmaeon's time, the medical school in Magna Graecia was regarded as the most famous; illnesses were studied in a scientific and experimental manner. Alcmaeon was considered by many an early pioneer and advocate of anatomical dissection and was said to be the first to identify Eustachian tubes. His celebrated discoveries in the field of dissection were noted in antiquity, but whether his knowledge in this branch of science was derived from the dissection of animals or of human bodies is disputed. Calcidius, on whose authority the fact rests, merely says ""qui primus exsectionem aggredi est ausus"," and the word "exsectio" would apply equally well in either case; some modern scholars doubt Calcidius' word entirely.