Part 81

Scivias, lib. iii, vis. 1; Migne, col. 565.

Migne, col. 18.

Migne, col. 18.

Cartulaire de l’Université de Montpellier (1180-1518), Montpellier, 1894, p. 21.

Dates of the institution of dissection at this and other Universities are given by F. Baker in Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, vol. xx, p. 331, Baltimore, 1909.

Statuti dell’ Università di Medicina e di Arti del 1405, Rubr. lxxxxvi (‘De anothomia quolibet anno fienda’) in the Statuti delle Università e dei collegi dello Studio bolognese, edited by Carlo Malagola, Bologna, 1888, p. 289.

J. Säxinger, Ueber die Entwickelung des medizinischen Unterrichts an der Tübinger Hochschule, Tübingen, 1884, pp. 5 and 10.

How rarely dissections were conducted in some of the Universities may be gathered from the first statutes of the medical faculty of Tübingen, dated 1497. These ordain a dissection every three or four years. Not till 1601 was an anatomy held at Tübingen even once a year (see Säxinger, loc. cit.). Even at Montpellier in the sixteenth century the scarcity was so great that Rondelet (1507-66) was on one occasion reduced to dissect the body of his son. For this terrible incident see A. Portal, Histoire de l’Anatomie et Chirurgie, Paris, 1770, vol. i, p. 522; A. Haller, Bibliotheca anatomica, Lib. iv, § clxxxiv, Leyden, 1774, vol. i, p. 205; and A. O. Goelicke, Introductio in historiam litterariam anatomes, Frankfurt, 1738, p. 136. There was, however, a relatively plentiful supply of subjects in the Italian Universities and especially at Bologna and Padua in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries (cp. A. Haller, Bibliotheca anatomica, introduction to Lib. v, p. 218). This was perhaps due to the utterly depraved state of public and private morals to which the peoples of the peninsula had been reduced by the excesses of the tyrants and the condottieri.

Plate XXVIII b is perhaps the earliest representation of the practice of dissection yet brought to light. It is described in Charles Singer, ‘Thirteenth-Century Miniatures illustrating Medical Practice’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Section of the History of Medicine, 1916, vol. ix, pp. 29-42.

Plate XXIX: a post-mortem scene in the late fourteenth century, from a French MS. of the Grande Chirurgie of Guy de Chauliac, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Médecine de Montpellier, MS. 184 français, folio 14 recto. The scene is laid in the bedroom of the deceased. In the left-hand top corner is the bed, by the side of which a female figure, partly obliterated, is praying. Below and to the left are two other female figures, and a man richly dressed in an ermine-trimmed robe. These are presumably the relatives of the dead. The corpse, that of a woman, has been placed on a bare table and is opened from the larynx to the symphysis pubis. In front stands a lad holding a round wooden vessel for the reception of the viscera, and farther to the right is a stool on which are placed two or three instruments. The physician, in full canonicals, is at the extreme right of the picture. The actual process of examination is being made by three of his assistants. To the left the first of these deepens, with a knife, the incision that has already been made over the sternum, the second is grasping with his two hands and rolling up the great omentum so as to display the viscera beneath, and the third holds a wand in his right hand, with which he points to the abdomen, while in his left he carries a book. Five others throng into the room from a passage which opens into it.

Antonio Benivieni, De abditis nonnullis ac mirandis morborum et sanationum causis, Florence, 1506. In the description of Case 32, Benivieni expresses surprise at having been refused permission to perform a post-mortem examination, as though it were unusual for him to meet rebuffs of the kind. ‘Experimento comprobare volentes, corpus incidere tentavimus sed nescio qua superstitione negantibus cognatis, voti compotes fieri nequivimus.’

See E. Nicaise, La Grande Chirurgie de Guy de Chauliac, p. 30, Paris, 1890.

‘Ut Anatomici explicationem ipsius Mundini sequantur’, Francesco Maria Colle, Storia scientifico-letteraria dello Studio di Padova, 4 vols., Padua, 1824-5, vol. iii, p. 108.

Martin von Mellerstadt, also called Pollich or Polich.

Plate XXX a, from a late fifteenth-century Provençal translation of the Grande Chirurgie of Guy de Chauliac. Vatican Library, MS. hispanice 4804, folio 8 recto. A professor and pupil are examining a wasted corpse placed on a trestle in the open air. The teacher is pointing out the surface markings.

Plate XXX b, from the French Guy de Chauliac MS. in the Bristol Reference Library, folio 25 recto. The MS. dates from between the years 1420 and 1435; cp. Norris Mathews, Early Printed Books and MSS. in the Bristol Reference Library, Bristol, 1899, p. 70; J. A. Nixon, ‘A New Guy de Chauliac MS.’, in Transactions of the XVIIth Internal. Cong. of Med., Sect. of Hist. of Med., London, 1914, p. 419; and Charles Singer, ‘The Figures of the Bristol Guy de Chauliac MS. circa 1430’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Section of the History of Medicine, 1917, vol. x, pp. 71-91. The figure shows a professor and pupil. The former is demonstrating the bones of a skeleton.

The number of female criminals being less than the number of male criminals, Ludovico Frati states (La vita privata di Bologna dal secolo XIII al XVII, Bologna, 1900, pp. 116-18) that only two anatomies in all were held each year, and thirty students admitted to the female and twenty to the male dissection. This would mean far less than two dissections a year for each student of over two years’ standing.

The anatomical works of Leonardo have now been rendered accessible in Tredici Foglie delta Royal Library di Windsor. Leonardo da Vinci, Quaderni d’anatomia ... Pubblicati da O. C. L. Vangensten, A. Fonahm, H. Hopstock, Christiania, 1911, &c.

Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio only studied surface anatomy, so far as is known. For a summary of the anatomical work of these painters see M. Duval and E. Cuyer, Histoire de l’Anatomie plastique, p. 20, Paris, 1898.

It has been suggested that Giammatteo Ferrari da Grado (Matthaeus de Gradibus), who was professor of Medicine at Pavia 1432-72, made original contributions to anatomy. He wrote no separate work on anatomy, but his observations on the ovaries (which he was perhaps the first to call by that name) appear in his Practica, Milan, 1471, and in his Expositiones super vigesimam secundam Fen tertii canonis Avicennae, Milan, 1494. An interesting account of Ferrari’s life and work is given by his descendant, H. M. Ferrari, in Une Chaire de Médecine au XV^{e} siècle; Un professeur a l’université de Pavie de 1432 à 1472, Paris, 1899. In this work the claim that De Gradibus was an original and independent observer is effectively disposed of.

At least six Western copies of this series, besides three or more of oriental origin, have now been detected. The Western MSS. and their dates are as follows:

(a) Munich, Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, Cod. lat. monacensis 13002, before 1158.

(b) Munich, Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, Cod. lat. monacensis 17403, circa 1250.

(c) Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 399, circa 1290.

(d) Dresden, Kgl. Öffentl. Bibliothek, Codex 310, before 1323.

(e) Bodleian Library, MS. e Museo 19, before 1344.

(f) Library of Count F. Zdenho von Lobkowicz in Raudnitz, of 1399.

See E. Seidel and K. Sudhoff, especially ‘Drei weitere anatomische Fünfbilderserien aus Abendland und Morgenland’, in Archiv für Gesch. der Med., iii, p. 165, Leipzig, 1910.