The study of anatomy had to contend with two great difficulties, want of subjects for dissection, and faith in the written word.
Thus, at Bologna, where it was arranged that every medical student of over two years’ standing should attend an Anatomy once a year, no less 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 instruction received. Some other Universities had to be content with the cadaver of a single criminal per annum for the whole body of students.
In the first period during which the human body was dissected in Europe, the thirteenth century, a certain amount of progress was certainly made, despite the rarity of subjects. The rebirth of learning in the thirteenth century was not, however, as favourable to anatomical progress as might have been hoped. Galen, indeed, ceased to be a mere name, and the Latin translations of his text, or of 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 fifteenth century, was really stationary so far as the first-hand knowledge of anatomy was concerned. With the last decade of the fifteenth century, however, there opens a new and third period in the history of our subject. From that time dates the true era of anatomical renaissance, which may be regarded as continuing until the commencement of modern anatomy with the great work of Vesalius in 1543.
Plate XXXI. From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345
at CHANTILLY
Plate XXXII. From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345
at CHANTILLY
We have said that throughout the second period, the formal demonstrations based on the declaimed text of Galen or Avicenna or Mondino were practically the sole opportunities afforded to either teacher or pupil for the investigation of the minuter details of the human frame. But in making this statement concerning the arrest of anatomical progress, we must expressly exclude the products of the mighty genius of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose anatomical 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 the muscles of the nude human figure in such a way as leads us to suppose that they had investigated the superficial structures at least of flayed parts. Such is the suggestion of some of the work of Luca Signorelli (c. 1442–c. 1524), and of Andrea Mantegna (died 1506). With such reservations, however, it is probably true that no evidence is forthcoming until the last decade of the fifteenth century of any advance from the standpoint of Mondino.[137]