Old anatomical theatres and what took place therein.

IN the development of medical teaching through the centuries, the history of the anatomical theatre has a particular importance. It is closely connected not only with the history of medicine and of teaching, but also with the history of art. The theatre arose out of the stream of ideas which flowed through Italy at the time of the Renaissance. Its purpose was to offer a performance, for as we shall see, an anatomical dissection in those days was really more of a theatrical occasion than a lesson. The outstanding personalities and authorities of the town were invited to be present. It was the first laboratory, the first place where scientific research was carried out. At first anatomical instruction was given in the home of the teacher, but at the beginning of the fourteenth century it was transferred to the growing universities of Italy. The most ancient of these were Bologna, founded in 1113, Padua in 1222, Messina in 1224, and Pavia. There had been single faculties of medicine earlier at Salerno and other places, but one faculty does not make a university. In 1306 Mundinus conducted the public dissection of a human body. Mundinus, son of a pharmacist, was professor of anatomy at Bologna. He has been recognized as the founder of anatomy in the middle ages because he was the first to introduce the dissection of human bodies into the programme of medical studies and because he wrote for his students in 1316 an anatomic compendium which remained famous for two hundred years. He is said to have died in 1318. The book has no illustrations, but editions published after his death were illustrated and one of them published in 1493 contained a well-known dissection scene.2 Mundinus sits in a chair wearing a coat and high cap. In his left hand is an open book. Below, on a table lies a dissected cadaver with a curved knife beside its left foot. To the right of the body stands a young man in a short garment, bare-headed and with long curls, grasping the intestines with both hands. Johannes de Ketham, a German physician living in Italy, has also left us a picture of a dissection in progress. This woodcut first appeared in the same year as the other, 1493, filling a whole page of the book.3 At the top in the lecturer's chair sits a youthfullooking man lecturing. Below him lies a naked male body. A dissector, whose dress is distinguished by a row of buttons, is about to cut open the chest, using a long curved knife. Behind him stand seven persons whose heads reach to the upper edge of the chair. One of the spectators standing at the head of the body holds a small wand in his hand and appears to be guiding the dissector. Berengario da Carpi shows us a third dissection scene, published in 1521. There are present, the lecturer sitting at the left, the bare-headed dissector, who seems to be removing the skin with a large knife, and three other persons who are covered. One of them is dressed in a long coat.4