With Giacomo Berengario da Carpi we come at length to one who
definitely advanced the science, and who may be regarded as the
first modern anatomist, so far as printed works are concerned. He
was professor of Surgery from 1502 to 1527, and during that period
published his great anatomical work.[166] This volume, though modestly
put forward as a commentary on Mondino, is in reality an original
contribution of great value. It is the earliest anatomical treatise
that can properly be described as having figures illustrating the text
(Fig. 8).[167] Carpi does not hesitate to criticize the work on which
he comments--as for instance when he denies the existence of the ‘rete
mirabile’ below the brain, though descriptions of the ‘rete mirabile’
had been based on the statement of no less an authority than Galen.
Furthermore he was the first to describe the vermiform appendix, and
he gave the earliest correct account of several other organs, e.g.
the choroid plexus and the olfactory nerves. He was an industrious
dissector, and he tells us that he had examined more than a hundred
bodies.
With Carpi we close our series of Bolognese anatomists. Into that
group we now proceed to fit the writer with whom we are here specially
concerned, Hieronymo Manfredi.
[Illustration: From a drawing in the Library, WINDSOR CASTLE