He quotes
from Galen the amusing reasons why a man should write a book: "Firstly,
to satisfy his own friends; secondly, to exercise his best mental
powers; and thirdly, to be saved from the oblivion incident to old age."
Scores of manuscripts of his work must have existed, but they are now
excessively rare in Italy. The book was first printed at Pavia in 1478,
in a small folio without figures. It was very often reprinted in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The quaint illustration shows us the
mediaeval method of teaching anatomy: the lecturer sitting on a chair
reading from Galen, while a barber surgeon, or an "Ostensor," opens the
cavities of the body.
I have already referred to the study of medicine by women at Salernum.
Their names are also early met with in the school of Bologna. Mundinus
is said to have had a valuable assistant, a young girl, Alessandra
Giliani, an enthusiastic dissector, who was the first to practice the
injection of the blood vessels with colored liquids. She died, consumed
by her labors, at the early age of nineteen, and her monument is still
to be seen.
Bologna honored its distinguished professors with magnificent tombs,
sixteen or seventeen of which, in a wonderful state of preservation,
may still be seen in the Civic Museum.
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