"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!"
How well the tradition created by Mondino continued at the university will be best understood from what we know of Guy de Chauliac's visit to the medical school here about the middle of the century. The great French surgeon tells us that he came to Bologna to study anatomy under the direction of Mondino's successor, Bertruccius. When he wrote his preface to his great surgery he recalled this teaching of anatomy at Bologna and said, "It is necessary and useful to every physician to know, first of all, anatomy. For this purpose the study of books is indeed useful, but it is not sufficient to explain those things which can only be appreciated by the senses and which need to be seen in the dead body itself." He advises his students to consult Mundinus' treatise but to demonstrate its details for themselves on the dead body. He relates that he himself had often, multitoties, done this, especially under the direction of Bertruccius at Bologna. Curiously enough, as pointed out by Professor Pilcher, Mondino had used this same word multitotiens (the variant spelling makes no difference in the meaning) in speaking about his own work. In describing the hypogastric lesion he mentions that he had demonstrated certain veins in it many times, multitotiens.
Mondino was just past fifty when he finished his little book and permitted copies of it to be made. Though the book occurs so early in the history of modern book-making the author offers his excuses to the public for writing it, and quotes the authority of Galen, to whom he turns in other difficult situations, for justification. As prefaces go, Mondino's is so like that of many an author of more recent date that his words have a bibliographic, as well as a personal, interest. He said:
"A work upon any science or art—as saith Galen—is issued for three reasons: first, that one may satisfy his friends. Second, that he may exercise his best mental powers. Third, that he may be saved from the oblivion incident to old age. Therefore, moved by these three causes, I have proposed to my pupils to compose a certain work on medicine.
"And because a knowledge of the parts to be subjected to medicine (which is the human body, and the names of its various divisions) is a part of medical science, as saith Averrhoes in his first chapter, in the section on the definition of medicine, for this reason among others, I have set out to lay before you the knowledge of the parts of the human body which is derived from anatomy, not attempting to use a lofty style, but the rather that which is suitable to a manual of procedure."
Some of the early editions of Mondinus' book are said, according to old writers, to have contained illustrations. None of these copies have come down to us, but the assertion is made so definitely that it seems likely to have been the case. The editions that we have contain wood engravings of the method of making a dissection as frontispiece, so that it would not be difficult to think of further such illustrations having been employed in the book itself. As we note in the chapter on "Great Surgeons of the Medieval Universities," Mondeville, according to Guy de Chauliac, had pictures of anatomical preparations which he used for teaching purposes. It is easy to understand that the value of such aids would be recognized at a time when the difficulty of preserving bodies made it necessary to do dissections hurriedly so as to get the rapidly decomposing material out of the way.
Beyond his book and certain circumstances connected with it we know very little about Mondino. What we know, however, enables us to conclude that, like many another great teacher, he must have had the special faculty of inspiring his students with an ardent enthusiasm for the work that they were taking under him. Hence the body-snatching and other stories. Mondino continued to be held in high estimation by the Bolognese for centuries after his death. Dr. Pilcher calls attention to the fact that his sepulchral tablet, which is in the portico of the Church of San Vitari in Bologna, and a replica of which he was allowed to have made in order to bring it to America, is the only one of the sepulchral tablets in the great churches of Florence, San Domenico, San Martino, the Cathedral and the Cloister of San Giacomo degli Ermitani, which has not been removed from its original location and placed in the halls of the Civic Museum. Their removal he considers "a kind of desecration which does violence to one's sense of sanctity and propriety." "Fortunately, thus far, the Mondino Tablet has escaped the spoiler." Very probably Dr. Pilcher's replica of the tablet which he was required to deposit in the Civic Museum at the time when the copy was made to be brought to America may save the tablet to be seen in its original position for many generations.
Mondino's career is of special interest because it foreshadows the life and accomplishment of many another maker of medicine of the after time. He did a great new thing in medicine in organizing regular public dissections, and then in making a manual that would facilitate the work. He waited patiently for years before completing his book in order that it might be the fruit of long experience, and so be more helpful to others. He was so modest as to require urging to secure the publication. He had the reward of his patience in the popularity of his little work for centuries after his time. The glimpse that we get of his relations to his young assistants, Agenius and Alessandra, seems to show us a teacher of distinct personal magnetism. Undoubtedly the reputation of his book did much for not only the medical school of the University of Bologna, but also for the medical schools of other north Italian universities, and helped to bring to them the crowds of students that flocked there during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Taddeo and Mondino turned the attention of the medical students of their generations Bolognawards. Before that time they had mainly gone to Salerno. After their time most of the ardent students of medicine felt that they must study for a time at least at Bologna. Other important medical schools of Italian universities at Padua, at Vicenza, at Piacenza, arose and prospered. During the time when the political troubles of Italy reached a climax about the middle of the fourteenth century, while the Popes were at Avignon, there was a remission in the attendance at all the Italian universities, but with the Popes' return to Rome and the coming of even comparative peace to Italy, Bologna once more became the term of medical pilgrimages for students from all over the world. In the meantime Mondino's book went forth to be the most used text-book of its kind until Vesalius' great work came to replace it. To have ruled in the world of anatomy for two centuries as the best known of teachers is of itself a distinction that shows us at once the teaching power and the scientific ability of this professor of anatomy of Bologna in the early fourteenth century.