After placing the dead body on a bench, my master proceeded with his instructions, devoting thereto four separate sittings. At the first of these he passed in review those parts or organs which are concerned in nutrition; his reason for considering them first being that they are the earliest to undergo decomposition. At the second sitting he devoted himself to the spiritual organs of the body; at the third, to the animal parts; and at the fourth, to the extremities. Following the example furnished by Galen in his commentary on the book entitled “The Sects,” he maintained that there were nine things which should be taken into consideration when one examines the different parts of the body, to wit: their situation; their nature, color, bulk, number, and shape; their connections or relations; their actions and their utility; and the diseases which may affect them. Conducted in this manner the study of anatomy, he maintained, may prove helpful to the physician in recognizing diseases, in making prognoses, and in selecting a suitable plan for treatment.
Puschmann, quoting from Hyrtl, says that when Professor Galeazzo di Santa Sofia, who had been called from Padua to Vienna to fill the Chair of Anatomy in the medical school of that city, made his first public dissection of a human body (1404 A. D.) in the Bürgerspital, the sittings covered a period of eight days; at the end of which time he collected as much money as he could from those who had attended the course, and turned it over to the treasurer of the Faculty. Then followed a period of twelve years during which not a single public dissection of a human body was made in Vienna. In 1440 the Faculty were greatly rejoiced over the prospect of receiving from the authorities the body of a criminal who was to be hung on a certain day; but, when the time arrived and the body had actually been delivered to them, they were grievously disappointed by the sudden coming to life of the supposed corpse. Instead of dissecting him for the benefit of science, the doctors bestirred themselves in the man’s behalf, obtained a pardon in due form, and sent him back to his home in Bavaria under the escort of the college janitor. Not very long afterward, however, he committed a fresh crime, and this time was effectively hung. History does not state whether the dissection then came off, or not.
The Medical Faculty of the University of Tübingen established the rule in 1497 that one human body should be publicly dissected every three or four years; it being understood that during the progress of the dissection the professor should read aloud to the class appropriate portions of Mondino’s treatise on anatomy. The instruction in this department of medical science was of the same general character in all the other universities of Germany at that period. Anatomical drawings, of a very crude type, were employed as substitutes for actual dissection.
At Padua, in Northern Italy, the science of medicine had already before the end of the first half of the fifteenth century made a decided advance, in proof of which several circumstances may be mentioned. In the first place, the importance of the study of anatomy had by this time become so generally recognized that no special difficulty appears to have been encountered in securing the erection, in 1446, of an anatomical theatre; and during this same period several physicians connected with the medical school acquired considerable celebrity by their publication of important treatises on topics belonging to the domain of general pathology and therapeutics, and by the wide influence which they exerted as teachers. Among the number of those who helped in these ways to spread the fame of the Medical School of Padua may be mentioned Hugo Benzi, Antonio Cermisone, Giovanni Savonarola and Bartolommeo Montagnana.
Hugo Benzi (or Hugo of Siena) taught philosophy as well as medicine in different institutions of learning—at Pavia, Piacenza, Florence, Bologna, Parma, Padua and Perugia. His death probably occurred at Ferrara about the year 1439. In addition to commentaries on Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna, he wrote several practical works (“Consilia”) on such topics as periodical insanity, stomachic vertigo, naso-pharyngeal polypi, epilepsy, lachrymal fistula, etc.
Antonio Cermisone was a native of Padua, became a teacher of medicine first in Pavia and afterward in Padua, wrote several useful treatises about various diseases, and finally died about 1441.
Giovanni Michele Savonarola—the grandfather of the celebrated Girolamo Savonarola, who was burned at the stake for heresy 1498 A. D.—held the Chair of Medicine in Padua from about 1390 to 1462, and also subsequently for a certain length of time in Ferrara. He was the author of a number of treatises on practical medical topics—such, for example, as fevers (first published in Venice in 1498), the art of preparing simple and compound aqua vitae (Basel, 1597), an introduction to the practice of medicine (1553), the baths of Italy and of the rest of the world (Venice, 1592), the different kinds of pulse, etc. (Venice, 1497)—and he also wrote a large work covering the entire field of medicine and modeled on the pattern of Avicenna’s “Canon.” The book is divided into six parts, each of which is preceded by an introduction that is devoted to the anatomico-physiological bearings of that particular part; and here, in addition, there are to be found scattered throughout the text references to surgical procedures. Among the references of this character the following deserve to be mentioned as worthy of some notice: the description of a speculum for use in operations upon the interior of the nose; a reference to direct laryngoscopy; the description of an instrument closely resembling the well-known syringotome; the treatment of curvature of the spine by mechanical means, etc. The book also reveals the fact that, already at this period of the history of medicine (the middle of the fifteenth century), physicians were beginning to take a more active part than they had previously done in the management of confinement cases, which as a rule were left entirely to the care of midwives. The records also show that medical men were interesting themselves more and more, as time went on, in sanitary science as applied to municipal affairs. In most communities the need for such was indeed most urgent at that time. The reforms of this nature were pushed with special vigor in those parts of Italy which were governed by that enlightened ruler of the Hohenstaufen family, Frederic II., King of Sicily and Roman Emperor. The cultivation of personal hygiene was also pursued very systematically during the later Middle Ages, the Regimen Salernitanum serving as the guide in such matters.
Taken all together the conditions in the physician’s world were in anything but a promising state toward the end of the fifteenth century; but the dawn of better times, of modern medicine, was near at hand, and already signs of its approach were beginning to be recognizable in different parts of Western Europe.
CHAPTER XXV
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ALLIED SCIENCES—PHARMACY, CHEMISTRY AND BALNEOTHERAPEUTICS
During the excavations carried on at the site of Pompeii, there were discovered three houses which bore every appearance of having been occupied by apothecaries. Among the objects found in these buildings were: A bronze box equipped with the apparatus required for mixing ointments; a few surgical instruments; several glass receptacles which had evidently at some earlier period contained fluid or semi-fluid pharmaceutical preparations, but which, at the time when the excavations were made, presented merely a deposit of some solid but easily friable substance at the bottom of the vessel; and quite a variety of drugs in the form of pills, tablets, powders, etc. At first, the impression prevailed that these must have been the houses of apothecaries, but subsequently the discovery, in each instance, of the house sign representing a snake with a pine cone in its mouth (the symbol of Aesculapius) satisfied the authorities that these particular buildings had belonged to physicians. Indeed, as a matter of fact, no good reasons have thus far been found for believing that apothecaries, in the modern acceptation of the term, existed in even the largest cities of Greece and Italy until a much later date.