Studies in the History and Method of Science

of dissection there is of considerably later date. In February 1302 a certain Azzolino died under susp

ected in the great vein known as the vena chilis [vena cava]153 and in the veins of the liver adjacent thereunto, has prevented the due movement of the spiritus throughout the body, and has thus produced the diminutio

which the fourth and shortest is devoted to anatomy. Its descriptions are brief and concise. They are often clearly the result of actual observation, and they show hardly any trace of the absurd and irritating teleology that the influence of the Arabians and of Galen made customary in early anatomical literature. The anatomy of Saliceto appears to us very sensible and so far a

VE-FIGURE SERIES BOD

NS, &c.????ARTERIES???????NER

N MS. Plate XXXIV.?DE

lf of XVt

epts the views of the ancients against what must often have been the evidence of his own senses. The work, however useful to the contemporary student, was thus essentially reactionary as against the efforts of the earlier Salernitan anatomists and of William of Saliceto. This is the more remarkable because it is quite clear that he was accustomed to demonstrate on the actual body-a privilege denied to the early Salernitan school,-and he was, moreover, a popular and successful teacher. His work is a manual of dissection rather than

nd was very influential in standardizing practice, especially in the north and west of Europe. Nevertheless it appears to us that the anatomical section is the weakest part of Guy's great work. The teleology that is a blot in Mondino has here become a perfect plagu

next generation, however, Pietro d'Argellata, deserves to be remembered for his description of the examination of the body of Pope Ale

them as with the rectum, and so I had the intestines clean and without fetor. After this I extracted the liver, seizing its ligaments; then the spleen and then the kidneys, and these were all placed together in a jar. I now passed to the spiritual members [i.e. the thorax] and removed lung and heart and all their ligaments. Then I ligatured the meri [the Arabian term for oesophagus] and

iele Gerbi (de Zerbis, died 1505) and Alessandro Achillini (1463–1512). Gerbi163 does little but repeat in the most verbose fashion the work of Mondino and of Avicenna, some of whose errors, however-e.g. the three ventricles of the heart-he omits. He wrote als

icize Mondino, and his work has at least the advantage of brevity. He has a claim to be remembered in that he was the first to describe the duct of Wharton and is said to have been the first to describe the ear ossicles, malleus and incus. Achillini, like G

HE ABDOMI

pi's Commentary on M

dino, 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

Into that group we now proceed to fit the writer with

y, WINDSOR CASTLE Plate XXXV

RDO D

MEO MANFREDI (1574?–1602) Plate XXXVI.?THE TWO FIGURES DISSECTING ARE