understand the marvellous reputation acquired by this medieval
physician. It should not be, however, when we recall the enthusiastic
reception and procession of welcome accorded to Cimabue's Madonna, and
the almost universal acclaim of the greatness of Dante's work, even in
his own time. In something of that same spirit Bologna came to
appreciate Taddeo, as he is familiarly known, looked upon him as a
benefactor of the community, and voted to relieve him of the burden of
paying taxes. He came to be considered as a public institution, whose
presence was a blessing to his fellow citizens, and whose goodness to
them should be recognized in this public way. One is not surprised to
hear Villani, the well-known contemporary historian, speak of him as the
greatest physician in Christendom.
The feelings of the citizens of Bologna, it may well be confessed, were
not entirely unselfish, or due solely to the desire to encourage a great
scientific genius. Few men of his generation had done more for the city
in a material way quite apart from whatever benefits he conferred upon
the health of its citizens than Dr. Taddeo. It was he who organized
medical teaching in the city on such a plane that it attracted students
from all over the world. Bologna had had a great law school before this,
founded by Irnerius, to which students had come from all over the world.
With the advent of Taddeo from Florence, and his success as a medical
practitioner, there began to flock to his lectures many students who
spread his fame far and wide. The city council could scarcely do less
than grant the same privileges to the medical students and teachers of
Taddeo's school as they had previously accorded to the faculty of law
and its students. The city council recognized quite as clearly as any
board of aldermen in the modern time how much, even of material benefit,
a great university was to the building up of a city, though their
motives were probably much higher than that, and their enlightened
policy had its reward in the rapid growth of Bologna until, very
probably at the end of the thirteenth century, it had more students than
any university of the modern time. The number was not less than fifteen
thousand, and may have been twenty thousand.
To this great university success Taddeo and his medical school
contributed not a little. The especially attractive feature of his
teaching seems to have been its eminent practicalness. He himself had
made an immense success of the practice of medicine, and accumulated a
great fortune, so much so that Dante, in his "Paradiso," when he wishes
to find a figure that would represent exactly the opposite to what St.
Dominic, the founder of the Dominicans, did for the love of wisdom and
humanity, he takes that of Taddeo, who had accomplished so much for
personal reputation and wealth.
This might easily lead to the impression that Taddeo's teaching was
unscientific, or merely empiric, or that he himself was a narrow-minded
maker of money, intent only on his immediate influence, and hampered by
exclusive devotion to practical medicine. Nothing could be farther from
the truth than any such impression. Taddeo was not only the head of a
great medical school, a great teacher whom his students almost
worshipped, a physician to whom patients flocked because of his
marvellous success, a fine citizen of a great city, whom his fellow
citizens honored, but he was a broad-minded scholar, a philosopher, and
even an author in branches apart from medicine.
In that older time it was the custom to combine the study of philosophy
and medicine. For centuries after that period in Italy it was the custom
for men to take both degrees, the doctorate in philosophy and in
medicine at the same time. Indeed, most of those whose work has made
them famous, down to and including Galvani, did so. Taddeo wrote
commentaries on the works of Hippocrates and Galen, but he also
translated the ethics of Aristotle, and did much to make the learning of
the Arabs easily available for his students. His was a broad, liberal
scholarship. Dr. Lewis Pilcher, in his article on "The Mondino
Myth,"[14] does not hesitate to say that "to the spirit which, from his
professorial chair, Taddeo infused into the teaching and study of
medicine undoubtedly is due the high position which for many generations
thereafter the school of Bologna continued to maintain as a centre of
medical teaching."
Of course, erudition had its revenge, and carried Taddeo too far. The
difficult thing in human nature is to stay in the mean and avoid
exaggeration. His methods of illustrating medical truths from many
literary and philosophical sources often caused the kernel of
observation to be hidden beneath a blanket of speculation or, at least,
to be concealed to a great extent. Even the Germans, who have insisted
most on this unfortunate tendency of Taddeo, have been compelled to
confess that there is much that is valuable in what he accomplished, and
that even his modes of expression were not without a certain vivacity
which attracted attention and doubtless added materially to his success
as a teacher. Pagel, in Puschmann's "Handbuch," says: "It cannot be
denied [this is just after he has quoted a passage of Taddeo with regard
to dreams] that Taddeo's expressions have a certain liveliness all their
own that gives us some idea why he was looked upon as so good a teacher,
a teacher who, as we know now, also gave instruction by the bedside of
patients." Pagel adds, "Taddeo's greatest merit and his highest
significance in medical education consist in the fact that a great many
(_zahlreiche_) physicians followed directly in his footsteps and were
counted as his pupils. They were all men, as we know them, who as
writers and practitioners of medicine succeeded in going far beyond the
level of mediocrity in what they accomplished."
This was the teacher who most influenced young Mondino when he came to
the University of Bologna, for it seems not unlikely that as a medical
student he was actually the pupil of Taddeo, then in a vigorous old age.
If not, he was at least brought under the direct influence of the
teaching tradition created during more than thirty years by that
wonderful old man. Knowing what we do of Taddeo it is not surprising
that his pupil should have accomplished work that was to influence
succeeding generations more than any other of that wonderful thirteenth
century. Dr. Pilcher in the article on "The Mondino Myth," so often
placed under contribution in this sketch, says that "It needs no great
stretch of the imagination to picture somewhat of the effect that
contact with such a man as Taddeo di Alderotto[15] might have, in
molding the character of his young neighbor and pupil, the chemist's
son, who a few years later, by his devotion to the study of human
anatomy, was to re-establish the practical pursuit of study on the
human cadaver as the common privilege of the skilled physician, and was
to engrave his own name deeply on the records of medicine."
Under this worthy compatriot and contemporary of the great Florentines,
Mondino was inspired to be the teacher that did so much for Bologna.
Until recent years it has usually been the custom to give too much
significance to the work of the men whose names stand out most
prominently in the early history of departments of the intellectual
life. Mondino's reputation has shared in this exaggerative tendency to
some extent, hence the necessity for realizing what was accomplished
before his time and the fact that he only stands as the culmination of a
progressive period. Carlyle spoke of Dante as the man in whom "ten
silent centuries found a voice." The centuries, however, were only
silent because the moderns did not know how to listen to their message.
We know now that every country in Europe had a great contributor to
literature in the century before Dante. The Cid, the Arthur Legends, the
Nibelungen, the Troubadours, naturally led up to Dante. He was only the
culmination of a great period of literature. We know now that men had
worked in art before Cimabue and Giotto, and had done impressive work
that made for the progress of art. These names, however, have come to
represent in many minds the sort of solitary phenomena that Dante has
seemed sometimes even to scholars.
Because Mondino did such good work in medical teaching it is sometimes
declared, even in rather serious histories, that he was the first to
accomplish anything in his department, and that before his time there is
a blank. Some historians, for instance, have insisted that Mondino was
the first to do human dissections, and that he did at most but two or
three. Only those who are unacquainted with the magnificent development
of surgery that took place during the preceding century, the evidence
for which is so abundantly given in modern historians of medicine and
especially in Gurlt's great work on the history of surgery, from which
we have quoted enough to give a good idea of the extent to which the
movement went, are likely to accept any such declaration. There could
not have been all that successful surgery without much dissection not
only of animals but also of human bodies. The teaching of dissection was
not regularly organized until Mondino's time, but it seems very clear
that even he must have dissected many more bodies than the number
usually attributed to him. Professor Lewis Stephen Pilcher of Brooklyn,
who made a special study of Mondino traditions in Bologna itself, and
collected some of the early editions of his books, feels so acutely the
absurdity of the ordinarily accepted tradition in this matter, that he
has written a paper on the subject bearing the suggestive title, "The
Mondino Myth." He says:[16]
"We are accustomed to think of the practice of dissection as
having been re-created by Mondino, and at once fully
developed, springing into acceptance. The year 1315 is the
generally accepted date for the first public anatomical
demonstration upon a human body made by Mondino, and yet it is
true that among the laws promulgated by Frederick II, more
than seventy-five years before (A.D. 1231), was included a
decree that a human body should be dissected at Salernum at
least once in five years in the presence of the assembled
physicians and surgeons of the kingdom, and that in the
regulations established for admission to the practice of
medicine and surgery in the kingdom it was decreed that no
surgeon should be admitted to practise unless he should bring
testimonials from the masters teaching in the medical faculty,
that he was 'learned in the anatomy of human bodies, and had
become perfect in that part of medicine without which neither
incisions could safely be made nor fractures cured.'
"Salernum was notable 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 at
Venice which was even then authorized to dissect a body 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 1231 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 in 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 14th century the idea of
dissecting the human body was not a novel one; 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 immediately
preceding 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.
"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 involves 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, viz., 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 that '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 have seen in
the human female, for she was pregnant and contained thirteen
pigs.' These happen to be the only reference to specific
bodies that he makes in his treatise. But it is a far cry to
wring out of these references the conclusion 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 by 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."
(Quotations from the work of Mundinus showing his familiarity
with dissections. The leaf and line references are to the
Dryander edition, Marburg, 1541.)
"I do not consider separately the anatomy of component parts,
because their anatomy does not appear 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, and perhaps I will make an anatomy upon such a one at
another time and will write what I shall 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 a dissection as this, but it should be
liquefied 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."
(Leaf 61, lines 1-7.)
Very probably the best evidence that we have of the comparative
frequency at least of dissection at this time is to be found in the
records of a trial for body-snatching that occurred in Bologna. The
details would remind one very much of what we know of the difficulties
with regard to dissection in America a couple of generations ago, when
no bodies were provided by law for dissection purposes. In the course of
some studies for the history of the New York State Medical Society (New
York, 1906) I found that nearly every one of the first half dozen
presidents of the New York Academy of Medicine, which is not much more
than sixty years old, had had body-snatching experiences when they were
younger. Dr. Samuel Francis, the medico-historical writer, tells of a
personal expedition across the ferry in the winter time, bringing a body
from a Long Island graveyard. In order to avoid the constables on the
Long Island side and the police on the New York side, because there had
been a number of cases of body-snatching recently and the authorities
were on the lookout, the corpse was placed sitting beside the physician
who drove the wagon, with a cloak wrapped around it, as if it were a
living person specially protected against the cold. Similar experiences
were not unusual. The lack of bodies for dissection is sometimes
attributed to religious scruples, but they have very little to do with
it, as at all times men have refused to allow the bodies of their
friends to be treated as anatomical material. This is the natural
feeling of abhorrence and not at all religious. It is only when there
are many unclaimed bodies of strangers and the poor, as happens in large
cities, that there can be an abundance of anatomical material.
The details of this body-snatching case are strangely familiar to those
who know the history of similar cases before the middle of the
nineteenth century. The case occurred in 1319 in Bologna, just four
years after Mondino's public dissections. Four students were involved in
the charge of body-snatching, all of them from outside the city of
Bologna itself, three from Milan and one from Piacenza. In modern
experience, too, as a rule, students from outside of the town where the
medical college was situated, were always a little readier than natives
to violate graveyards. These four students were accused of having gone
at night to the Cemetery of St. Barnabas, outside the gate of San
Felice,--suburban graveyards were usually the scene of such
exploits,--and to have dug up the body of a certain criminal named
Pasino, who had been hanged a few days before. They carried the body to
the school in the Parish of San Salvatore, where Alberto Zancari was
teaching. The resurrection had been accomplished without witnesses, but
there were several witnesses who testified that they recognized the body
of Pasino in the school and students occupied with its dissection. If
evidence for the zeal of the medical students of that time for
dissection were needed, surely we have it in the testimony at this
trial. At a time when body-snatching has become a criminal offence
usually there have been many repeated occurrences of it before the
parties are brought to trial, so that it seems not unlikely that a good
many dissections of illegally secured bodies were being done at Bologna
at this time.
We know of a regulation of the University in force at this time, which
required the teachers at the University to do an anatomy or dissection
for students if they secured a body for that purpose. The students seem
to have used all sorts of influence, political, monetary, diplomatic,
and ecclesiastical, in order to secure the bodies of criminals.
Sometimes when they failed in their purpose they waited until after
burial and then took the body without leave. When we recall the awfully
deterrent condition in which bodies must have been that were thus
provided for dissecting purposes, it is easy to understand that the
enthusiasm of the students for dissection must have been at a very high
pitch. Certainly it was far higher than at the present day, when, in
spite of the fact that our dissecting-rooms have very few of the
old-time dangers and unpleasantnesses, dissection is only practised with
assiduity if special care is exercised in requiring attendance and
superintending the work of the department.
In my book on "The Popes and Science" I have gathered the traditions
relating to Mondino's assistants in the chair of anatomy at Bologna.
They furnish abundant evidence of the fact that dissections, far from
being uncommon, must have been not at all infrequent at the north
Italian universities at this time. Curiously enough, one of these
assistants was a young woman who, as was not infrequently the custom at
this 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 professors.
According to the "Cronaca Persicetana," quoted by Medici in his "History
of the Anatomical School at 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." The whole passage shows a wonderful
anticipation of 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 in the Church of San Pietro e
Marcellino of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Mareto, gives all the
important facts, and tells the story of the grief of her fiance, who was
himself Mondino's other assistant.[17] 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:
"What advantage indeed might not Bologna have had from Otto
Agenius Lustrulanus, 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!"