Studies in the History and Method of Science

d 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

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 co

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Lyons, 1482.

XXIX.?A POST-MORTEM EXAMI

fo. 8 r Plate XXX a.?A DEMO

r Plate XXX b.?A DEMONSTRATION OF T

on of the Anatomy of Mondino, Leipzig, 14

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

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 actu

himself handling the body and demonstrating to his pupil (Plate XXX a132 and b133), but there is evidence that th

A DISSEC

edition of 'Ketham' (

s Anglicus, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. The fi

LECTURE

tion of Berengar of Carp

wo great difficulties, want of subjects fo

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 i

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 fifteen

the MS. of GUY DE

HANT

the MS. of GUY D

HANT

atomical 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

ly 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 ob

AMS OF THE IN

. Ashmole 399 of about 12

sor.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 an

f 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 Monteferr

7 (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

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 h

E LAID OPEN TO SHOW TH

nslated into Italian. This is the first prin

etched 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