"Was dissection prevented and anatomical investigation hampered after
the issuance of the bull?" This is entirely a question of fact. The
history of anatomy will show whether dissection ceased or not at this
time. Now if those who so confidently make assertions in this matter
had ever gone to a genuine history of anatomy, they would have learned
at once that, far from this being the time when dissection ceased, the
year 1300 is almost exactly the date for which we have the first
definite evidence of the making of dissections and the gradual
development of anatomical investigation by this means in connection
with the Italian universities. This is such a curious coincidence that
I always call it to the attention of medical students in lecturing on
this subject.
{37}
The first dissection of which we have definite record, Roth tells us
in his life of Vesalius, was a so-called private anatomy or dissection
made for medico-legal purposes. Its date is the year 1302, within two
years after the bull. A nobleman had died and there was a suspicion
that he had been poisoned. The judge ordered that an autopsy be made
in order to determine this question. Unfortunately we do not know what
the decision of the doctors in the case was. We know only that the
case was referred to them. Now it seems very clear that if this had
not been a common practice before, the court would not have adopted
this measure, apparently as a matter of judicial routine, as seems to
have been the case in this instance. Had it been the first time that
it was done instead of having the record of the transaction preserved
only by chance, any mention of it at all would have appeared so
striking to the narrator, that he would have been careful to tell the
whole story, and especially the decision reached in the matter.
After this, evidence of dissection accumulates rapidly. During the
second decade of the century Mondino, the first writer on anatomy, was
working at Bologna. We have the records of his having made some
dissections in connection with his university teaching there, and
eventually he published a text-book on dissection which became the
guide for dissectors for the next two centuries. Within five years
after this we have a story of students being haled to court for
body-snatching for anatomical purposes, and about this time there was,
according to Rashdall in his History of the Universities, a statute of
the University of Bologna which required the teacher in anatomy to
dissect a body, if the students brought it to him. More than ten years
earlier than this, that is, {38} within ten years after the supposed
Papal prohibition, there are records of dissections having been made
at Venice in public, for the benefit of the doctors of the city, at
the expense of the municipal treasury. During the first half of this
century money was allowed at Bologna for wine, to be given to those
who attended the public dissections, and if we recall the state in
which the bodies must have been at a time when the use of
preservatives was unknown, we can well understand the need for it. All
this shows, as I have said, that the date of Boniface's bull (1300),
far from representing the eclipse of anatomy, actually fixes the date
of the dawn of modern practical anatomical study.
The most interesting question in this whole discussion is as to how
much dissection Mondino actually did during the second decade of the
fourteenth century. His book became the manual of dissection that was
in practically every dissector's hands for several centuries after.
Probably no book of its kind has ever been more used, and none
maintained its place as the standard work in this department for so
long. No less than 25 printed editions of it appeared altogether. It
would seem to be utterly improbable that the author of a text-book of
this kind could have made only a few dissections. There are a number
of historians who have claimed, nevertheless, that at most he did not
dissect more than three or four bodies. This is all that we have
absolute evidence for, that is to say, only these dissections are
recorded. It is easy to understand, however, that a professor of
anatomy might make even hundreds of dissections, and yet have
something to say only about a very few which happened to present some
special peculiarities. The absence of further records may readily be
accounted for also in {39} other ways. The art of printing was not yet
invented; paper had only just been discovered and was extremely
expensive, and many factors conspired to destroy any records that may
have been made.
Outsiders dipping into the history of medicine have made much of our
paucity of documentary evidence with regard to what Mondino actually
did, and have, when it suited their purpose, insisted that this first
author of a dissector's manual did but the three or four dissections
explicitly mentioned. Those who are more familiar with the history of
medicine, and especially of anatomy, are persuaded that he must have
done many. In the first class of writers is Prof. White, for instance,
who declares positively that Mondino did not dissect more bodies than
those of which we have absolute records. According to his emphatically
expressed opinion, the reason why the father of dissection did not
dissect more was because of ecclesiastical opposition. Even these few
dissections were due to some favoring chance or the laxity of the
ecclesiastical authorities, or Mondino might have paid dear for his
audacity. No one else, according to Prof. White, dared to encounter
the awful penalties that might have been inflicted on Mondino until
Vesalius, more than two centuries later, broke through "the
ecclesiastical barrier" and gave liberty to anatomists. Prof. Lewis S.
Pilcher, of Brooklyn, who has made a special study of Mondino and his
times, who has consulted that author's original editions, who has
searched out the traditions with regard to him in the very scene of
his labors in Bologna, thinks quite differently. Prof. White has a
purpose, that of minimizing the work done in anatomy during the
fourteenth century; Prof. Pilcher's only purpose is to bring out the
truth with regard to the history of {40} anatomy. In the Medical
Library and Historical Journal for December, 1906, Prof. Pilcher has
an article entitled The Mondino Myth, by which term he designates the
idea that Mondino dissected but a few bodies. He says with regard to
this subject:
"The changes have been rung by medical historians upon a casual
reference in Mondino's chapter on the uterus to the bodies of two
women and one sow which he had dissected, as if these were the first
and the only cadavers dissected by him. The context involved no such
construction. He is enforcing a statement that the size of the
uterus may vary, and to illustrate it remarks that, 'a woman whom I
anatomized in the month of January last year (1315 Anno Christi),
had a larger uterus than one whom I anatomized in the month of March
of the same year.' And further, he says, 'the uterus of a sow which
I dissected in 1316 (the year in which he was writing) was a hundred
times greater than any I had seen in the human female, for she was
pregnant, and contained thirteen pigs.' These happen to be the only
references to specific bodies that he makes in his treatise. But it
is a far cry to wring out of these references the conclusions that
these are the only dissections he made. It is quite true that if we
incline to enshroud his work in a cloud of mystery, and to figure it
as an unprecedented, awe-inspiring feature to break down the
prejudices of the ages, it is easy to think of him as having timidly
profaned the human body in his anatomizing zeal in but one or two
instances. His own language, however, throughout his book is that of
a man who was familiar with the differing conditions of the organs
found in many different bodies--a man who was habitually
dissecting."
{41}
As I think must be clear to any one who knows Mondino's book, no other
conclusion than this suggested by Prof. Pilcher can be drawn. This
opinion has been frankly stated, by every historian of anatomy in
recent years. Puschmann says it very clearly. Von Toeply is evidently
of the same opinion. These are the latest authorities in the history
of anatomy. No other conclusion than this could well be reached by
anyone who has studied the question seriously. Pilcher confirms this
in the article already quoted in the following paragraph:
"Salernum was not alone in its legalization of the dissection of
human bodies before the first public work of Mondino, for, according
to a document of the Maggiore Consiglio of Venice of 1308, it
appears that there was a college of medicine in Venice, which was
even then authorized to dissect a body once every year. Common
experience tells us that the embodiment of such regulations into
formal law would occur only after a considerable preceding period of
discussion, and in this particular field, of clandestine practice.
It is too much to ask us to believe that in all this period, from
the date of the promulgation of Frederick's decree of 1241 to the
first public demonstration by Mondino at Bologna in 1315, the decree
had been a dead letter and no human body had been anatomized. It is
true there is not, as far as I am aware, any record of any such
work, and commentators and historians of a later date have, without
exception, accepted the view that none was done, and thereby
heightened the halo assigned to Mondino as the one who ushered a new
era. Such a view seems to me to be incredible. Be that as it may, it
is undeniable that at the beginning of the fourteenth century the
idea of dissecting the human body was not a novel one; {42} the
importance of a knowledge of the intimate structure of the body had
already been appreciated by divers ruling bodies, and specific
regulations prescribing its practice had been enacted. It is more
reasonable to believe that in the era preceding immediately that of
Mondino, human bodies were being opened and after a fashion
anatomized. All that we know of the work of Mondino suggests that it
was not a new enterprise in which he was a pioneer, but rather that
he brought to an old practice a new enthusiasm and better methods,
which, caught on the rising wave of interest in medical teaching at
Bologna, and preserved by his own energy as a writer in the first
original systematic treatise written since the time of Galen,
created for him in subsequent uncritical times the reputation of
being the restorer of the practice of anatomizing the human body,
the first one to demonstrate and teach such knowledge since the time
of the Ptolemaic anatomists, Erasistratus and Herophilus."
In order to show that Mondino did not perform only the two or three
dissections which he himself for special reasons mentions, but many
more, Professor Pilcher has made a series of quotations from the
Bolognese anatomist's manual of dissection. It is after all quite easy
to understand that if dissections were common, there would be no
records of most of them, as they would be too commonplace for
chroniclers to mention. Only those that have some special feature are
by chance mentioned in some accounts of doings at the university. The
records of the actual number of dissections at most medical schools,
even a century ago, are not now available in most cases. On the other
hand, no one can read these quotations from Mondino's book without
realizing that the man who wrote these passages had made many {43}
dissections, and that it was a common practice for him to make
anatomical preparations in many different ways, under many different
circumstances and for many different purposes.
The second quotation shows, in fact, that Mondino had the custom
sometimes of boiling his bodies before dissecting them when he wished
to demonstrate special features, and he promises to make such an
anatomy for his students at another time. If the bull of Pope Boniface
VIII. was misinterpreted in any way to prohibit dissection, this would
surely be the practice supposed to fall under its provisions. Here we
find Mondino, less than twenty years after the promulgation of the
bull, writing about this very practice, however, and calmly suggesting
that he follows it as a routine, in a book that was published without
let or hindrance from the ecclesiastical authorities, and that became
for the next two centuries the most used book in the teaching of
anatomy in educational institutions that were directly under
ecclesiastical authorities. If the bull was misinterpreted so as to
forbid dissection, as has been said, surely this flagrant violation of
it would not have been permitted. It is clear that, if there was a
misinterpretation, it must have come later in the history of anatomy.
But of that we shall find no trace any more than at this time.
Here are the quotations from the Anatomy of Mondino which show that he
practiced not one but many methods of making dissections, according to
the purposes he had in view. The leaf and line references are to the
Dryander Edition, Marburg, 1541. (Taken from Prof. Pilcher.)
"I do not consider separately here the anatomy of component parts,
because their anatomy does not appear {44} clearly in the fresh
subject, but rather in those macerated in water." (Leaf 2, lines
8-13.)
".... these differences are more noticeable _in the cooked_ or
perfectly dried body, and so you need not be concerned about them,
as perhaps _I will make an anatomy upon such a one at another time_
and will write what I observe with my own senses, as I have proposed
from the beginning." (Leaf 60, lines 14-17.)
"What the members are to which these nerves come cannot well be seen
in such dissection as this, but it should be liquified with rain
water, and this is not contemplated in the present body." (Leaf 60,
lines 31-33.)
"After the veins you will note many muscles and many large and
strong cords, the complete anatomy of which you will not endeavor to
find in such a body, but in a body dried in the sun for three years,
as I have demonstrated at another time; I also declared completely
their number, and wrote the anatomy of the muscles of the arms,
hands and feet in a lecture which I gave over the first, second,
third and fourth subjects."
As must be clear to anyone, many of these expressions are, as
Professor Pilcher insists, intelligible only if we accept the
conclusion that their author had done many dissections, under many and
varying circumstances, during his career as an anatomist before
writing this volume. We have other evidence, of a much more direct
character, for this fact. Mondino uses the expression, that he had
demonstrated many times a certain anatomical feature which could only
be the subject of demonstration after dissection. The expression
occurs in a description of the hypo-gastric region which he calls the
sumen. Through this region, he says, there pass to the surface certain
veins which transmit fluid in the fetus {45} during the time of its
life in utero. For this reason they are better studied in the unborn
than in the fully developed, since they lose their function as soon as
complete development is reached. In this description Mondino uses the
words "ego hoc modo multitotiens monstravi."
As with regard to this, so as to another bit of evidence of Mondino's
frequency of dissection, Professor Pilcher has supplied the material.
He says in his article on the Mondino Myth, already cited:
"Shortly after his (Mondino's) death, the young Guy de Chauliac, of
Montpelier, came to Bologna to study anatomy under the tuition of
Mondino's successor, Bertrucius. When he wrote his own treatise, 'La
Grande Chirurgie,' thirty years later, he prefaced it with an
appreciation of the study of anatomy, saying: 'It is necessary and
useful to every physician to know first of all anatomy'; and that a
knowledge of anatomy was to be acquired by two means; 'these are,'
he says, 'the study of books, a means useful indeed, but not
sufficient to explain those things which can only be appreciated by
the senses; the other, experimentally on the dead body, according to
the treatise of Mondinus, of Bologna, which he has written, and
which (experimental anatomy on the cadaver) he (Mondinus) has done
many times'--'_et ipsam fecit multitoties._'"
Besides this evidence we have details of the lives of two of Mondino's
assistants which furnish further proofs of the frequency of dissection
at the University of Bologna during these first two decades of the
fourteenth century, which, it will be recalled, are also the first two
decades after the promulgation of Pope Boniface's bull. Curiously
enough, one of these assistants was a young woman who, as was not
infrequently the custom at this {46} time in the Italian universities,
was matriculated as a student at Bologna. She took up first philosophy
and afterwards anatomy under Mondino. While it is not generally
realized, co-education was quite common at the Italian universities of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and at no time since the
foundation of the universities has a century passed in Italy without
distinguished women occupying professors' chairs at some of the
Italian universities. This young woman, Alessandra Giliani, of
Persiceto, a country district not far from Bologna, took up the study
of anatomy with ardor and, strange as it may appear, became especially
enthusiastic about dissection. She became so skilful that she was made
the prosector of anatomy, that is, one who prepares bodies for
demonstration by the professor.
According to the Cronaca Persicetana, quoted by Medici in his History
of the Anatomical School of Bologna:
"She became most valuable to Mondino because she would cleanse most
skilfully the smallest vein, the arteries, all ramifications of the
vessels, without lacerating or dividing them, and to prepare them for
demonstration she would fill them with various colored liquids, which,
after having been driven into the vessels, would harden without
destroying the vessels. Again, she would paint these same vessels to
their minute branches so perfectly and color them so naturally that,
added to the wonderful explanations and teachings of the master, they
brought him great fame and credit." This whole passage shows a
wonderful anticipation of all our most modern methods--injection,
painting, hardening--of making anatomical preparations for class and
demonstration purposes.
Some of the details of the story have been doubted, but her memorial
tablet, erected at the time of her death {47} in the Church of San
Pietro e Marcellino of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Mareto, gives
all the important facts, and tells also the story of the grief of her
fiance, who was himself Mondino's other assistant. This was Otto
Agenius, who had made for himself a name as an assistant to the chair
of Anatomy in Bologna, and of whom there were great hopes entertained
because he had already shown signs of genius as an investigator in
anatomy. These hopes were destined to grievous disappointment,
however, for Otto died suddenly, before he had reached his thirtieth
year. The fact that both these assistants of Mondino died young and
suddenly, would seem to point to the fact that probably dissection
wounds in those early days proved even more fatal than they
occasionally did a century or more ago, when the proper precautions
against them were not so well understood. The death of Mondino's two
prosectors in early years would seem to hint at some such unfortunate
occurrence.
As regards the evidence of what the young man had accomplished before
his untimely death, probably the following quotation, which Medici has
taken from one of the old chroniclers, will give the best idea. He
said:
"What advantage indeed might not Bologna have had from Otto Agenius
Lustrolanus, whom Mondino had used as an assiduous prosector, if he
had not been taken away by a swift and lamentable death before he had
completed the sixth lustrum of his life!"
Further absolute proof that dissections were very common about the
time that Mondino made those which are recorded, and the mention of
which has led to the false assumption as to the rarity of dissection,
is to be found in the legal prosecution for body-snatching, which I
have already mentioned and which took place within five {48} years
after Mondino made the public demonstrations in dissection that are
the subject of discussion. It will be conceded by everyone that such
prosecutions for body-snatching are not likely to occur when only one
or two graves are violated a year, but are usually the result of a
series of such outrages, which arouse the community against them. We
prefer to give this bit of history once more in the words of Professor
Pilcher, who has argued this whole case for _the frequency of
dissection within twenty years after the bull that is supposed to have
forbidden it_ better than anyone else, and whose knowledge of Mondino
and his times is such as to make him an authority on the subject. He
has no interest in them, as I have said, either for or against the
Popes. His only idea is to bring out the real meaning of whatever data
we possess for the history of anatomy and dissection at this time.
"An instructive and interesting side-light on the conditions
attending the study of practical anatomy in the days of Mondino may
be found in a record, still extant, of a legal procedure which
occurred in Bologna in the year 1319, four years after Mondino had
begun his public demonstrations and at a time when Otto and
Alessandra were doubtless enthusiastically working with him.
According to the record, four students, three from Milan and one
from Piacenza, were accused of having gone at night time to the
cemetery of the church of San Barnada, outside the San Felice gate,
and to have sacrilegiously violated the grave in which was buried
the body of a certain Pasino who had been hung on the gallows near
the Ponte di Reno. It was charged that the students had taken up the
body and carried it to the school of the parish of San Salvatore,
near the pharmacy of {49} Giacomo de Guido, where Master Alberto
(Zancari) was teaching. There were witnesses who affirmed that they
had seen the body of Pasino in the school and the students and
others intent upon dissecting it. It was the sixth of December when
the arrests were made, but the final outcome of the trial is not
stated."
Surely all this must be considered sufficient evidence to show that
Pope Boniface's bull neither forbade dissection, nor was
misinterpreted as prohibiting any practice in connection with
anatomical investigation. It is not enough for President White,
however, for after the publication of my original article in the
Medical Library and Historical Journal on The Popes and Anatomy, and
another article on Pope John XXII. and the Supposed Bull against
Chemistry, President White wrote thus in reply: "Dr. Walsh takes up
the decretal of Boniface VIII., in 1300, and endeavors to show that,
so far from forbidding dissection, it had quite a different tenor, and
that at sundry universities in Italy and at the University at
Montpelier, in France, dissection was permitted and most openly
practiced. This seems to me very disingenuous. The decretal of
Boniface was construed universally as prohibiting dissections for any
purpose whatever."
For President White, then, the publication of the text of the bull is
only an _endeavor_ to show that, so far from forbidding dissection, it
had quite a different tenor. This endeavor seems to him very
disingenuous(!) It matters not what evidence there may be for
dissection, or lack of evidence as to ecclesiastical opposition, the
decretal of Boniface was _construed universally_ as prohibiting any
dissections for any purpose whatever. All history must yield before
the reiteration of the assertion {50} that the Popes did forbid
dissection, and that there was no anatomy during the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, except such as by chance, in some
way or other, succeeded in evading the Church regulations. It simply
must have been so. President White has said it. For anyone to deny it
is to question his historical infallibility. Only those who are
disingenuous will dare to do so.