ANATOMICAL FIGURE FROM LAURENTIUS PHRYESEN, 1518
Alexander Achillinus
The Italian physician Alexander Achillinus (1463-1525), professor of philosophy and medicine in Bologna, is deserving of mention for his anatomical knowledge. Zealously devoted to the Arab medical authors, Achillinus made numerous discoveries which are set forth in his general anatomy, De Humani Corporis Anatomica, Venice, 1516; and in a commentary upon Mondino’s book, In Mundini Anatomiam Annotationes, Venice, 1522. He discovered the duct of the sublingual gland, usually credited to Wharton; two of the auditory ossicles, the malleus and incus; the labyrinth; the vermiform appendix; the caecum and ileo-caecal valve; and the patheticus nerve. Portal credits him with a better knowledge of the bones and of the brain than was possessed by his predecessors.
ALEXANDER ACHILLINUS
Berengario da Carpi
DISSECTION BY BERENGARIO, 1535
Giacomo Berengario, Jacobus Berengarius Carpensis, also known as Carpus, was born in the small town of Carpi, in the Duchy of Modena, in the year 1470. His father, who was a surgeon, directed his studies, and for a time he was placed under the instruction of the learned Aldus Manutius. Graduating in medicine from the University of Bologna, Berengario became noted for his skill in surgery and anatomy. He taught these branches in Pavia, and was a member of the Bologna faculty from 1502 to 1527. Then he practiced for a time in Rome, where he amassed a fortune by the treatment of the victims of syphilis. The last twenty years of his life were spent in Ferrara, where he died in 1550. Berengario was one of the restorers of anatomy. His first dissection is said to have been made in the house of Albert Pion, Seigneur de Carpi. This demonstration was given publicly upon the body of a pig. Soon the anatomist turned his attention to human subjects, of which it is said that more than a hundred passed beneath his scalpel.
Berengario’s later years are said by Brambilla to have been made miserable by the machinations of the agents of the Inquisition, who objected to some of his opinions regarding the organs of generation. He was unjustly accused of dissecting living men—an accusation which arose from his statement that the surgeon should observe the anatomy of the living body whenever it was opened by wounds or accidents.