Part 18

Plate XXVII. MUNDINUS(?) LECTURING ON ANATOMY]

TO ILLUSTRATE THE ANATOMY OF HENRI DE MONDEVILLE]

Plate XXVIII. A DISSECTION SCENE circa 1298]

A STUDY IN EARLY RENAISSANCE ANATOMY,

WITH A NEW TEXT:

THE ANOTHOMIA OF HIERONYMO MANFREDI (1490)

By Charles Singer

TEXT TRANSCRIBED AND TRANSLATED BY A. MILDRED WESTLAND

I. Anatomy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 79

II. Bolognese Works on Anatomy 92

III. Hieronymo Manfredi, Professor at Bologna, 1463-93 97

IV. The Manuscript Anatomy of Manfredi 103

V. Translation of Selected Passages from the Anothomia, with Commentary 106 (a) The Brain, Cranial Nerves, &c. 106 (b) The Eye 118 (c) The Heart 122 Italian Text of the Anothomia 130

I. ANATOMY IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES

There was little or no progress in the knowledge of anatomy between the death of Mondino in 1327 and the sixteenth century. This appears the more remarkable when we recall how widespread was the practice of dissection during the period. In France, at the University of Montpellier, public dissections were decreed in the year 1377, and Catalonian Lerida followed suit in 1391. At Bologna, where dissection had long been customary, it received official recognition in the University Statutes in 1405, and the same event took place at Padua in 1429. Public anatomies were instituted at the University of Prague in 1460, of Paris in 1478, and of Tübingen in 1485. For these ‘Anatomies’ the bodies of executed criminals were usually employed, and therefore the number of subjects available varied greatly in different localities. In addition to these regular dissections, there was certainly a considerable amount of post-mortem examination, surreptitious (Plate XXVIIIb), or even open (Plate XXIX), long before Benivieni published his memorable list of cases.

Plate XXIX. A POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION. Late XIVth Century]

Plate XXX a. A DEMONSTRATION OF SURFACE MARKINGS]

Plate XXX b. A DEMONSTRATION OF THE BONES TO ILLUSTRATE GUY DE CHAULIAC]

That so much industry was rewarded by so small an increase in knowledge may probably be attributed to the method adopted. The so-called ‘anatomies’ were conducted in the most formal manner. Bertuccio, for example, who succeeded Mondino as professor of Surgery at Bologna, was accustomed, as we learn from his pupil Guy de Chauliac, to give short systematic anatomical demonstrations on a fixed and rigid method. The occupant of the chair at this period was indeed no professor in the modern sense of the word. To expound the tradition of anatomy as it had reached him was regarded as the limit of his duty. Of any attempt to extend the bounds of knowledge, of any systematic endeavour to correct or improve the anatomical views of his predecessors, we find little or no trace. Indeed, at Padua it was expressly laid down in the statutes that the exposition of anatomy should follow the very words of Mondino.

Early figures portraying the teaching of anatomy (Plate XXVII and Figs. 1-3, 5) usually show us a medical doctor sitting at a desk, well removed from the subject of dissection, and reading from his text-book the description of the part. Meanwhile an assistant, who is usually also a doctor, performs the actual work of dissection. The professor of Surgery, to whom the teaching of anatomy was entrusted, stands by with a pointer to indicate the different organs.

From the Venice 1495 edition of ‘Ketham’ (compare Plate XXVII).]

Fig. 5. A LECTURE ON ANATOMY

From the 1535 Venice edition of Berengar of Carpi’s Commentary on Mondino.]

Sometimes the professor changes places with the reader at the desk. In some later MSS. the teacher is figured as himself handling the body and demonstrating to his pupil (Plate XXX a and b), but there is evidence that the miniatures portraying this are the work of artists unfamiliar with dissection and with the teaching of anatomy.

The study of anatomy had to contend with two great difficulties, want of subjects for dissection, and faith in the written word.

Thus, at Bologna, where it was arranged that every medical student of over two years’ standing should attend an Anatomy once a year, no less than twenty students were admitted to see the anatomy of each man, and thirty to the anatomy of each woman. This was all the practical instruction received. Some other Universities had to be content with the cadaver of a single criminal per annum for the whole body of students.

In the first period during which the human body was dissected in Europe, the thirteenth century, a certain amount of progress was certainly made, despite the rarity of subjects. The rebirth of learning in the thirteenth century was not, however, as favourable to anatomical progress as might have been hoped. Galen, indeed, ceased to be a mere name, and the Latin translations of his text, or of its adumbra in the writings of the Arabians, became ever more familiar. On the other hand, with more authoritative texts in their hands, men were but the more inclined to follow the evil scholastic way, and to trust rather to the written words of the master than to the evidence of their own senses. Thus it came about that the second period, which covers the fourteenth and most of the fifteenth century, was really stationary so far as the first-hand knowledge of anatomy was concerned. With the last decade of the fifteenth century, however, there opens a new and third period in the history of our subject. From that time dates the true era of anatomical renaissance, which may be regarded as continuing until the commencement of modern anatomy with the great work of Vesalius in 1543.

We have said that throughout the second period, the formal demonstrations based on the declaimed text of Galen or Avicenna or Mondino were practically the sole opportunities afforded to either teacher or pupil for the investigation of the minuter details of the human frame. But in making this statement concerning the arrest of anatomical progress, we must expressly exclude the products of the mighty genius of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), whose anatomical researches were without influence, and remained long unnoticed. We must also omit evidence gathered from the work of such early Renaissance painters as Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-98) or Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88), for these pursued the study of anatomy in a special field and with a special object. Furthermore, there are a number of artists of similar date of whose anatomical studies we have no direct evidence, but who yet outlined the muscles of the nude human figure in such a way as leads us to suppose that they had investigated the superficial structures at least of flayed parts. Such is the suggestion of some of the work of Luca Signorelli (c. 1442–c. 1524), and of Andrea Mantegna (died 1506). With such reservations, however, it is probably true that no evidence is forthcoming until the last decade of the fifteenth century of any advance from the standpoint of Mondino.