Studies in the History and Method of Science

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 1377,121 and Catalonian Lerida followed suit in 1391.122 At Bologna, where dissection had long been customary, it received official recognition in the University Statutes in 1405,123 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 1485.124 For these 'Anatomies' the bodies of executed criminals were usually employed, and therefore the number of subjects available varied greatly in different localities.125 In addition to these regular dissections, there was certainly a considerable amount of post-?mortem examination, surreptitious (Plate XXVIII b126), or even open (Plate XXIX127), long before Benivieni published his memorable list of cases.128

Fig. 1.?From the French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Lyons, 1482. The first printed picture of dissection.

MS. fr. 184 fo. 14 r Plate XXIX.?A POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION. Late XIVth Century

VATICAN MS. HISPANICE 4804 fo. 8 r Plate XXX a.?A DEMONSTRATION OF SURFACE MARKINGS

BRISTOL REFERENCE LIBRARY MS. fo. 25 r Plate XXX b.?A DEMONSTRATION OF THE BONES TO ILLUSTRATE GUY DE CHAULIAC

Fig. 2.?Title-page of Mellerstadt's edition of the Anatomy of Mondino, Leipzig, 1493. The scene is laid in the open air.131

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.129 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.130

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.

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 a132 and b133), but there is evidence that the miniatures portraying this are the work of artists unfamiliar with dissection and with the teaching of anatomy.

Fig. 3.?A DISSECTION SCENE

From the Venice 1495 edition of 'Ketham' (compare Plate XXVII).

Fig. 4.?From the English translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. The first picture of dissection in an English-?printed book.

Fig. 5.?A LECTURE ON ANATOMY

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

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.134 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.

Plate XXXI.?From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345

at CHANTILLY

Plate XXXII.?From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345

at CHANTILLY

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.135 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.136 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.137

But if descriptive anatomy developed slowly in the hands of the physicians, the art of graphic representation of anatomical structures was still more backward. Several groups of anatomical drawings of mediaeval date have come down to our time, but examination of them shows that they have been drawn without direct reference to the human frame. Some of these figures are of the crude type known as the 'five-?figure series' (Plate XXXIII), mere traditional diagrammatic sketches.138 Hardly better or more instructive are the series of dissections which illustrate certain MS. works of Henri de Mondeville (Plate XXVIII a)139 and Guido de Vigevano (Plates XXXI and XXXII), 1345.140 A few sketches representing the separate organs have also survived (Fig. 6),141 but these never suggest that the draughtsman had before him the structure which he seeks to depict, and the drawings appear to have been made in order to illustrate contemporary physiological theory rather than observed anatomical fact. Even the magnificent illuminated Dresden Codex of Galen, prepared in France or Flanders as late as the second half of the fifteenth century, betrays not the slightest first-?hand knowledge of anatomy.142 Although the illustrations of this MS. are prepared with the utmost technical skill, they yet show us a teacher exhibiting to his pupils a heart of the form found on playing-?cards, and other anatomical figures scarcely more faithful to the facts (Plate XXXIV).

Fig. 6.?DIAGRAMS OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS

After Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 399 of about 1298, fos. 23 recto–24 recto.

The spirit of investigation of the artist who perforce went direct to nature, dissecting with his own hands and observing with his own eyes (Plate XXXVI), showed itself indeed far more fruitful than the tedious ex cathedra methodization of the professor.143 Yet the system of the schools needed to be combined with the freedom of the artist for the production of an effective anatomical work. What the projected treatise of Marcantonio della Torre (1473–1506) might have been we may guess from the anatomical sketches of Leonardo da Vinci (Plate XXXV), who was to have been associated with him in the work.144 In the event, however, the medical schools had to wait yet another generation before the subject was placed on a sound basis by André Vesale.

The Mondino pamphlet-for it is little more-used since its author's death in 1327 as a text-book in the schools of northern Italy, was first printed in 1478. Not until the last decade of the fifteenth century did there appear another work bearing evidence of the hand of a practical anatomist. This was an Italian translation of Ketham's Fasciculus medicinae, impressed at Venice in the year 1493.145 The volume comprises Mondino's pamphlet and a collection of other medical tracts that were probably put together by Giorgio di Monteferrato from the work of a writer of the previous century, for their contents are traceable to a fourteenth-?century MS.146 The text is neither original nor remarkable, but the Venice volume derives its importance from certain figures which appear in it for the first time.

Two of these plates are of great interest both intrinsically and also in relation to the history of anatomy. One of them is the magnificent representation of a dissection scene, which is regarded as perhaps the finest example of book illustration produced during the first century of typography147 (Plate XXVII). This work of the 'ma?tre aux dauphins', as the unknown artist is called by critics,148 is doubly interesting, for it is the subject of an experiment in colour printing, no less than four pigments being laid on by means of stencils. As early as 1457 the method of stencilling was employed for colouring the initials of a Psalter, and in 1485 Erhard Ratdolt in an astronomical work added yellow to the earlier red and black. The figure from which our plate is taken represents, however, the first attempt at a complex colour scheme and leads up to the work of Hugo da Carpi.149

In this picture the professor, a youthful figure perhaps intended to represent Mondino himself, is shown standing at a desk which hides his book. Around a corpse, laid on a trestle table before him, there cluster a number of men in doctor's robes. Their valid faces are sufficient to convince us that the artist is here presenting us with portraits. One of the listeners has removed his robe and stands with upturned sleeves and knife in hand, ready to make the first incision on the direction of the doctor, who points to the part with a wand held in the left hand. In the impression of 1495 and in those of later date, the book appears above the desk, the attitudes of the students are somewhat changed, and many other details are altered. In all these, however, the blocks have been recut and the result is artistically inferior150 (Fig. 3).

Fig. 7.?A FEMALE FIGURE LAID OPEN TO SHOW THE WOMB AND OTHER ORGANS

From the 1493 Venice edition of 'Ketham' translated into Italian. This is the first printed anatomical figure drawn from the object.

The second plate from the 1493 Ketham with which we are here concerned is the outline of a female body, in a traditional pose,151 laid open to exhibit some of the internal organs (Fig. 7). These had clearly been sketched from the object, and therefore this drawing, the first printed figure of its kind, may be said to introduce the new era for the investigation of the human frame. The anatomical renaissance had begun. Into a discussion of the full development of that age we cannot now enter. But the MS. of Manfredi, with which we have here to deal, was written at the very dawn of the new era and is itself one of its earliest documents.