University of Nevada, Reno
Blurring the Lines: Private and Public Dissection in Renaissance Italy
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of History
By
Kalina Yamboliev
Dr. Bruce Moran, Thesis Advisor
May, 2010
UNIVERSITY THE HONORS PROGRAM OF NEVADA RENO
We recommend that the thesis prepared under our supervision by
KALINA YAMBOLIEV
entitled
Blurring the Lines: Private and Public Dissection in Renaissance Italy
Be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
BACHELOR OF HISTORY
______Dr. Bruce Moran, Department of History; Faculty Mentor
______Tamara Valentine, Director; Honors Program
i
-Abstract-
From the fourteenth through the eighteenth century in Europe human dissection came to be practiced for a variety of purposes. Private dissections, in the forms of judicial, holy, and maternal anatomies, were performed, respectively, for the purposes of generating medical evidence that could be used in court, finding markings inside of a holy individual’s body that would confirm his or her sainthood, and to diagnose diseases which could have negative implications for the future of a family. Public dissections, on the other hand, were performed in university settings as a demonstrative and didactic technique, as well as a sort of public spectacle to gain attention and prestige for the institution hosting the event. This paper will delve deeper into these varieties of dissection, both public and private, as well as the extents to which they intersected and worked together to build off of one another. The final part of the paper will also consider an important anatomical figure – Andreas Vesalius – who performed anatomical work both privately and publically and who, with the publishing of his famous anatomical text De humani corporis fabrica in 1543, revolutionized medical and anatomical practice forever.
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-Table of Contents-
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………… i
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………. ii
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………….. iii
I. Introduction and Definitions……………………………………………...... 1
II. Private Dissection
a. Judicial Anatomy………………………………………………………… 3
b. Holy Anatomy…………………………………………………………… 4
c. Maternal Anatomy………………………………………………………. 13
III. Public Dissections
a. University Dissection……………………………………………………. 19
b. Anatomical Theatres…………………………………………………...... 25
IV. Andreas Vesalius……………………………………………………………. 29
a. The Fabrica…………………………………………………………...... 33
V. Conclusion………………………………………………………………….. 40
VI. Works Cited………………………………………………………………… 42
VII. Images and Illustrations…………………………………………………...... 43
iii
-List of Figures-
Figure 1 Early anatomical theater…………………………………………………… 43
Figure 2 Later anatomical theater…………………………………………………… 43
Figure 3 Sample “muscle man” from Berengario da Carpi’s Isagogue Breves……. 44
Figure 4 Illustration of foot from Berengario da Carpi’s Isagogue Breves……….... 44
Figure 5 Sample “muscle man” from Andreas Vesalius’s Fabrica………………… 44
Figure 6 Illustration of foot from Andreas Vesalius’s Fabrica…………………….. 44
Figure 7a-d Historiated initial letters from Andreas Vesalius’s Fabrica……………… 45
Figure 8 Title page of Andreas Vesalius’s Fabrica, 1543…………………………. 46
Figure 9 Portrait of Andreas Vesalius.……………………………………………... 46
1
-Introduction and Definitions-
In the winter of 1286 a curious epidemic afflicting humans and chickens struck parts of
Northern Italy. In Cremona, one physician opened a dead chicken, and found an unusual abscess on the tip of the heart. He found the same sort of growth on a human heart when he later opened a corpse, occasioning the first explicit and reliable reference to the exposition of a human body in Western Europe. Yet examination of the human cadaver was already being performed in nearby cities like Bologna, where such investigation could provide helpful information for criminal cases, or to satisfy a growing medical curiosity1. Often this sort of inspection was of the
external body, however, and this is precisely why the Cremona dissection is unique. It
demonstrates that both medical expertise and intellectual curiosity had matured to such a degree
that merely external observation could no longer satisfy the desire to understand the basic
workings of the human mechanism. At this point the move to internal investigation was fully on
the horizon.
The practice of dissection would achieve great popularity in the following centuries and
would come to be widely practiced during the Renaissance in a number of European countries,
though most especially in Italy and France. For the aims of this discussion I will define
“dissection” as the act of artificially separating the different parts of a body for the purpose of examination, discovery, or analysis of anatomical structure, function, and appearance, of the location, or organization of constituent parts of the body, or of the body as a whole. This
procedure could take the form of a “private” or a “public” dissection, each of which was driven
by different purposes and performed for specific audiences. Throughout this discussion,
“private” dissection will refer to the opening of a human cadaver in a more concealed location
1 Park, Katherine. Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection. Zone Books: New York, 2006, p. 78. 2
such as an individual’s home or in a church, and not open to general attendance. “Public”
dissection will signify operations performed for a broader audience, and in an open setting such
as a university classroom or “anatomical theatre.”
Although the dissections were distinguished as either “private” or “public” in
terminology and in theory, in practice the boundary was very fluid and unstable. Considering the
distinction between the two realms raises many questions for consideration: Who was
performing these procedures and how did they do it? What information was being sought, and
what was being discovered? Who attended the procedures, and what is it that each person
needed to know about the human body? From the start of the fourteenth century, dissection
would be undertaken for autoptical diagnosis, embalming, and innovative discovery and analysis,
and through the late seventeenth century it would serve purposes of didacticism, civic
demonstration and prestige. And as the practice acquired a longer standing and greater breadth of purpose, its practitioners were increasingly difficult to classify as either purely “private” or entirely “public”: they had roles in the courts of justice and in the sphere of public education, but they also made some of the discoveries for which the history of medicine most remembers them in the seclusion of their private laboratories. The blurring of the boundaries is best illustrated by the cases of the most memorable figures in the early history of dissection—the fourteenth- century Italian physician and instructor Bartolomeo da Varignana, the sixteenth-century Italian physician Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, and particularly, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Italian instructor and practitioner Andreas Vesalius. Understanding that private and public practices worked in unison at this time, when the medical perception of the human body was passing through some very significant changes, is important to appreciate the steps necessary to develop a realistic understanding of the human body. And indeed, such an 3
understanding developed very gradually: dissection would ultimately provide a great deal of
information important in university education and for a comprehensive medical practice, but its
initial applications were in situations that were far more exclusive.
-Private Dissections-
-Judicial Anatomy
Individuals aware of the dissection in Cremona in 1286, such as Franciscan friar Fra
Salimbene, seem to have recorded the event with considerable casualness,2 reminding us that
such procedures were not entirely unusual at this time. Bodies had been observed for centuries
previously, even though most examinations were only external and therefore only partial. Even
the records of a body examined by surgeon William of Saliceto in 1275, just a decade before the
Cremona dissection, indicate that observation was reserved mostly to the exterior of the body.3
As he investigated whether certain wounds had been severe enough to have caused the individual’s death, William was significantly restricted in the information he was able to gather.
Still, this sort of post-mortem examination of the human cadaver began to spread and develop into a practice called “Judicial anatomy,” resorted to for both medical and legal purposes.4
Judicial dissection originated in Italian urban centers like Rome and especially Bologna, and though they were still extremely rare at the beginning of the fourteenth century, some of the earliest instances remain on record. In February of 1302, for example, a dissection was performed on a man, Azzolino degli Onesti, who had recently died under suspicion of poisoning.
Through evidence gathered during a post-mortem investigation of the body, the medical
2 O’Malley, C.D. Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514‐1564. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964, p. 12.
3 Ibid., p. 12. 4 Secrets of Women, p. 88. 4
practitioners involved – two physicians and three surgeons – were able to conclude that the cause of death had been natural.5 As its uses became more apparent, dissection was employed more
regularly in instances of suspected murder, by both governmental and lesser authorities, although
generally reserved for the wealthier members of society. Special bodies of respected physicians
were appointed who could testify in trial when the need arose,6 wealthier families requested
autopsies in cases of unusual death, and even important figures such as Pope Innocent III
repeatedly ordered autoptical inspections.7 By the 1490’s Judicial dissection was often
employed in examinations of the bodies of political figures that were suspected of poisoning,8 and familiarity with the procedure was becoming important in medical and legal training as well.9 Still, it is crucial to recognize that judicial dissection was performed largely in search of abnormalities of the body which could help explain a certain medical problem or help to decipher the death of an important political figure. Dissection was not yet being used necessarily to understand what is common about the human organism.
-Holy Anatomy
Judicial anatomy is considered by some scholars to have originated as an extension of the practice of embalming, used fairly commonly in the preservation of the bodies of holy figures, such as the Popes during their eight day “period of exposition” after death. The process of embalming by evisceration consisted of the removal of the organs from the main cavity of the body, and its subsequent filling with herbs that would both slow the rate of decomposition of the
5 O’Malley, p. 13. 6 Park, Katharine. Chapter 11 on The Criminal and Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy (pp. 224‐253) from The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, edited by John Jeffries Martin, Routledge, New York, 2003, p. 228.
7 Secrets of Women, p. 52. 8 Ibid., p. 127. 9 The Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 227. 5
body and give it a more pleasant smell during its term of preservation and exposition.10 Opening
the holy figures for embalming inadvertently presented the opportunity to further explore their
bodies, however, and, as we shall see, a number of holy people were examined in search of signs
of sanctity that could be used in support of the figure’s canonization. These “holy anatomies” or
“holy dissections” could not only reveal the “allegedly miraculous healings” the candidate had
performed and the “supernatural signs in his or her body,” but offered means of acquiring
evidence of “the candidate’s health, sickness, or physical asceticism.”11 In other words, they
could generate medical evidence.
One of the earliest recorded cases was the dissection of the Italian nun Chiara de
Montefalco in 1308, roughly thirty years after the Northern Italian epidemic discussed
previously. After Chiara passed away the other nuns at the Church of Santa Croce where she
was abbess decided “that [her] body should be preserved on account of her holiness and because
God took such pleasure in her body and her heart.”12 The process is recorded in the words of one
of the nuns, Sister Francesca of Foligno, who testified in support of Chiara’s canonization a
decade later. She recalls how she personally cut open Chiara’s body, took out the viscera and
put the heart in a box. The following day, however, she and the nuns retrieved the heart for
further examination because they “believed they would find something wonderful.”13 The reason
for this stems from a cultural mindset and belief particular to that time: the heart was considered
to be the place where God inhabited the body, while demons were thought to reside in the
bowels. Women were considered particularly prone to possession by these sacred forces,
10 Siraisi, Nancy G. Medicine and the Italian Universities 1250‐1600. Volume 12 of Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Koninklijke Brill NV: Boston, 2001, p. 358.
11 Ibid., p. 362. 12 Excerpted from Enrico Menestò’s (ed.) Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco. Florence: Nuova Italia, 1984, p. 339. As translated in Secrets of Women, 39. 13 Ibid., pp. 341‐42. As translated in Secrets of Women, p. 42. 6
whether demonic or Godly,14 and thus, for a saintly individual such as Chiara, there was little
reason to doubt that her body would lack some sort of divinely-inspired markings. When the nuns opened Chiara’s heart and found inside a cross, a crown of thorns, nails, and a lance, as
well as three small stones inside her gallbladder, which were interpreted to refer to the Holy
Trinity, 15 their curiosities seemed to be satisfied. Although it is difficult to determine exactly
what these objects truly were – whether strange scars on her organs, collections of tissues and
fibers that formed interpretable shapes, or actual gallstones with unclear lines – at the time they
were seen as divine markings that would contribute significantly towards Chiara’s canonization.
Although the process was severely delayed - Chiara would not be canonized until 1881 by Pope
Leo XIII16 - the nuns’ investigations and observations at the time of her dissection were crucial.
The case of Chiara was not unique, and records recall multiple accounts of such fruitful
dissections of holy women. Margerita of Citta’ di Castello, another Italian nun, died in 1320 and
her body was similarly opened in the town church17 for embalming by evisceration. Little
attention was awarded to the individual organs initially, but several days after her internal organs
were removed those in possession of Margerita’s body returned specifically to examine her heart.
As with Chiara, miraculous objects were found: three small stones, each impressed with unique
images, including depictions of Mary, the baby Jesus, Joseph, the Holy Spirit, and a repentant
who was considered to be Margerita herself.18 A modern thinker will once again search for more
practical explanations – scars and marks on her heart, or clumps of tissue that would appear like
small stones – but to Margerita’s contemporaries, these objects were clearly marks of the divine.
14 Secrets of Women, p. 59. 15 Ibid., p. 41. 16 Donovan, Stephen. "St. Clare of Montefalco." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 14 Mar. 2010
The records of such cases are rare and inconsistent and it is difficult to determine how
many such private dissections might have been performed, but the continuity of this new practice
of dissection is apparent due to further records from the sixteenth century. In 1501 the Italian
visionary and prophet Colomba of Rieti died and, in the words of Friar Sebastian Bontempi, her former confessor and an eyewitness to her anatomy, she was opened in Perugia for embalming by a “most experienced physician [peritissimo physico].” The insides of her body displayed
some remarkable features: her stomach and intestines were nearly empty, and her heart was
bathed in uncongealed blood which Bontempi described as “full of life, bright, and pure as if it
had flowed from the throat of a living dove.”19 Again a case could be made for her canonization.
Elena Duglioli is another holy woman who was opened after apparently having told her confessor that Jesus had removed her heart from her body in 1507, and then had returned several years later to tell her that “the milk in her virginal breasts would last until the end of the world.”20 Apparently these promises were realized, at least to an extent; Elena began to lactate
and to menstruate when she was in her late thirties. When she died in 1520 her body was taken
for embalming but it was later examined further by the two surgeons and a physician present.
They claimed that her heart truly was missing, apparently replaced by an insipid, flat, and flabby
mass that most closely resembled “a piece of soft liver.”21 Her breasts were also awarded special
attention as physicians tried to determine when, or if, they would stop lactating. Over the next
two months her body was unearthed two more times for examination by at least eight more experts in medicine and natural philosophy, mostly from the universities of Bologna and Padua,
19 Excerpted from Sebastiano Bontempi’s “Vita beatae Columbae Reatinae,” in Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, vol. 5, Maii (Antwerp: Michael Cnobarus, 1685; facs. repr. Brussles: Culture and Civilisation, 1968), pp.319‐98. As translated in Secrets of Women, p. 171. 20 Excerpted from [Leggenda anonima di Elena Duglioli], Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna (BCAB), fol. 179r. As translated in Secrets of Women, p. 162. 21 Ibid., as translated in Secrets of Women, p. 162. 8
who searched for marks of her body’s corruption and deterioration. They, too, were unable to reach a consensus, and her canonization was delayed several centuries, until 1828.22
Despite the fact that these dissections were performed in reverence and honor of the holy
subjects, the scholar Katherine Park has noted that there are no recorded cases of holy men being
dissected until the middle of the sixteenth century.23 References to the embalming of one man,
Bernardino of Siena, who died in 1444 prove that the bodies of men were, indeed, being opened
before this time, but their internal organs were rarely inspected in the way those of the women
we have discussed so far were.24 It seems to have taken nearly two hundred years for the
practice of dissection of holy persons to detach itself from the female body to the point where it
would be appropriate for the regular use on the bodies of both women and men. The well-known
Spanish saint Ignatius of Loyola is probably one of the earliest examples of a holy man who was
dissected and inspected after his death in 1556. The anatomy was performed by Realdo
Colombo, professor of anatomy and a surgeon at the University of Padua at this time, who
“seems to have created some pressure to rewrite the history of the practice” hoping not only “to provide a male precedent for the general practice of holy anatomy [but also] for the specific discovery in the heart of signs of divine inhabitation.”25 In this instance he was successful.
Ignatius claimed to have the name of Christ written on his heart and records recall that when
Colombo opened his body he did indeed “[find] the name of Jesus Christ in letters of gold,”26 yet another inexplicable phenomenon by today’s standards. Aside from this, however, Colombo also found Loyola to have kidney and bladder stones, which explained the abdominal pains
22 Secrets of Women, p. 163. 23 Ibid., p. 50. 24 Ibid., p. 180. 25 Ibid., p. 179. Already by this point Colombo had dissected three other cardinals as well, all four cases largely due to the fact that he had personal connections to the figures or their friends – Siraisi, p. 367. 26 The Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 240. 9
Loyola had reportedly experienced in life.27 Loyola’s dissection may have been driven by a
religious purpose at first, but his case was only one of the many which would demonstrate that
dissection and anatomical investigation of the human body could be used in a variety of ways,
including for practical and medicinal purposes.
Carlo Borromeo and Filippo Neri, important figures of the Catholic Reformation, are two
other saintly individuals whose bodies were dissected in holy anatomies in the latter half of the
sixteenth century, but both of their anatomies proved far more public than many of those
performed previously. Carlo Borromeo died in 1584 and, as in previous cases, his body was
opened in search of evidence that could contribute to his canonization. Attention was focused
upon the heart but when Giovanni Battista Carcano Leone, a professor of anatomy and surgery at
the University of Pavia and the surgeon performing the operation, picked up Borromeo’s heart he
concluded that it was quite normal, in size and in appearance.28 The extreme emaciation of
Borromeo’s body was considered the most striking feature observed throughout the operation, and thus his dissection was completed with general ease and rapidity. Leone simply removed the internal organs and filled the cavity with the appropriate preservational herbs, completing a procedure that was now considered quite regular after having been practiced for nearly three hundred years. Borromeo’s dissection contributed no new or significant information for anatomical practice in itself since, as we have seen, many previous investigations into the human body had proved far more fruitful than this one. But what distinguished this otherwise conventional anatomy was that Leone, unlike his predecessors, went on to publish a pamphlet in
Latin enumerating the details of the procedure and what he had observed in Borromeo’s body.29
Leone was creating a public form of documentation for an event previously considered to be
27 Siraisi, p. 367‐68. 28 Ibid., p. 369. 29 Ibid., p. 363. 10
exclusively private, thus demonstrating that this seemingly-reserved anatomical practice was overflowing into the public sphere of information and accessibility.
That private anatomical dissection was becoming more publically-accessible in the latter
half of the sixteenth century is demonstrated still further in the dissection of Italian priest Filippo
Neri, performed in 1595, the night after Neri passed away at the age of eighty. Neri’s operation
took place in the Oratorian Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella and was attended by roughly
thirty people, among whom were included a physician, a surgeon, an apothecary, a barber-
surgeon, and two medici30– an impressive variety of medical personnel who showed intrigue in
the operation, or who sought to contribute their efforts. Although still secondary to the search
for signs of divine habitation, Neri’s cause of death was one of the major matters of interest. He
had suffered from attacks of violent palpitations and shortness of breath since he had been in his
thirties, and it was known that he had “an enlarged mass in his chest” throughout his life which
Neri and his companions had believed to be a positive trait, one signaling that Neri’s heart was specially-marked as yet another “theater of divine action”31 much as those of Chiara, Elena, and
our other previous figures had been. Several days before his death, however, Neri had begun
coughing up blood, and at least one figure present at his autopsy, the surgeon Zerla, mentioned
his curiosity in finding the source of the blood. Neri’s dissection proved quite informative in this
regard: the medical personnel present noticed fractured ribs, an enlarged heart, and an enlarged
pulmonary artery which served to explain the palpitations and other symptoms Neri had
experienced in life. All three of the physicians, however, concluded that these abnormalities in
Neri’s body were a result of divine intervention,32 showing the continuing reliance on
supernatural explanations in face of such anatomical anomalies. Still, other thinkers of the time
30 Ibid., p. 364. 31 Ibid., p. 368. 32 Ibid., p. 371. 11
focused more on the ability of such medical evidence to provide treatment and healing: Italian
physician and philosopher Andrea Cesalpino, for example, wrote about Neri’s dissection in his
1606 text Universal Practice of the Art of Medicine33 focusing more on the scientific discoveries
and internal abnormalities than on Neri’s supposed spirituality. But Neri’s dissection reflects
several other important changes occurring in the field of anatomical practice: not only was a
greater variety of medical personnel becoming involved in the procedure, but enough dissections
had been performed by this point that abnormalities in the human body could be recognized with
little difficulty. Furthermore, the increasing number of attendees at his dissection, even though it
was still held in a relatively-private church setting and at night, demonstrates yet again that private anatomical demonstrations were taking further steps to become more public. This greater publicity reflects a greater acceptance of the practice of holy anatomy as a whole, but this transition is demonstrated still better by the famous French saint of the Counter-Reformation
Francois de Sales (c. 1567-1622) who is remembered to have specifically stated, “I wish really for only one thing, that when I have expired, you shall deliver my body over to the doctors to perform the anatomy of it; it will be a relief to me to know that at least I shall serve the public in some way being dead, since I have been of no service during my life.”34 Such willingness in
offering one’s own body for the practice of dissection was rare, but de Sales’ statement shows
that dissection was sought out by some who wished to contribute to the ever-expanding medical
knowledge and anatomical proficiency, as well as demonstrates the lack of social or religious
taboos over this procedure.
33 Ibid., p. 379. 34 Excerpted from M. Vovelle’s Mourir autrefois: attitudes collectives devant la mort aux xviie et xviiie siecles (Paris, 1974), p. 47. As translated in Ferrari, Giovanna. Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna, found in Past & Present, No. 117 (Nov., 1987), pp. 50‐106. Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society, p. 102. 12
As we have seen, the subjects of holy anatomies changed between the fourteenth and late
sixteenth centuries as the procedure was first practiced on women, and then broadened and deemed acceptable for male holy figures as well. Yet it is also interesting to consider changes in who was performing the dissections throughout this same period, as there was an obvious
transition from less-specialized to more highly-specialized personnel here as well. In Chiara’s
dissection of 1302, doctors were present but it was five of her fellow nuns – women – who
controlled the operation; it was they who ordered the balsam, myrrh and other preservatives from
the town apothecary35 and then opened her body. Whereas the nuns proved impressively
familiar with the procedure, and were adept at performing the necessary steps, dissection clearly
was not practiced much by the doctors present whose contributions were minimal. At
Margherita’s dissection in 1320, the situation was similar. Several doctors were present, but they
“served only as incidental witnesses among many others,”36 and it was primarily the nuns who
performed for the operation. When Elena and Colomba were dissected two centuries later,
however, the procedure had become more common and was now being performed in university
cities with medical practitioners present who were, by this point, far more familiar with medical
theory, as well as its applications in practice. Ignatius of Loyola was dissected in 1556 by one of
the most famous physicians in history, Realdo Colombo; Carlo Borromeo was dissected by
Leone, an experienced professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Pavia; at Neri’s
dissection there were at least six medical personnel present from a variety of disciplines. What
began as a rare and private procedure performed by a select few nuns with unexpected
familiarity and experience in dissection and bodily preservation was beginning to gain such
public attention and importance that medical professors and workers were now becoming
35 The Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 225. 36 Secrets of Women, p. 163. 13
involved in the procedures. At the same time, this practice which had formerly been female
knowledge was now becoming dominated by male practitioners and was becoming increasingly more professional as it gained status and acceptance in society.
The increasingly public nature of anatomical dissection is reflected still further when one
considers the locations in which these procedures were performed, as well as the purposes driving the operations. Chiara’s dissection was performed in the monastery where she had been
abbess, and it was performed by the nuns out of respect and reverence for Chiara, and in search
of marks of divinity that could be used in support of her canonization. Margherita’s dissection
was performed at night and in the town church, signaling another extremely private operation
performed for reasons very similar to those driving Chiara’s dissection. By the end of the
sixteenth century, holy anatomies were still performed in relatively-private settings – Neri’s
dissection was held in a church and at night, for example – but they were open for a greater
number of attendees to observe the operation. Most importantly, observations and discoveries
from these private anatomies were made publicly available in published pamphlets or through
“casual” reference in other medical literature, as Leone and Cesalpino demonstrated. Without a
doubt private dissection was overflowing its boundaries and becoming an increasingly public
procedure, a trend that becomes further apparent when we consider a third type of private
dissection: maternal dissection.
-Maternal Dissection
In a strange combination of judicial and holy anatomy, maternal dissection began to
develop in the fifteenth century, driven most strongly by the realization that physicians could be
called on to testify in cases in which the issue was divorce or inheritance. Maternal dissection
also stemmed from the earliest forms of cesarean section, which were practiced rarely before 14
1300 but increasingly so in the two centuries following. If a mother died before childbirth, she
would be quickly opened by a present midwife or female servant so that the child could be saved
for an immediate baptism; many of the children did not survive long after this birth.37 But when
physicians became more versed in this procedure, and more familiar with what can be considered
“normal” human anatomy, reference to their expertise could be important for cases in which the
ruling was determined or altered by the pregnancy or virginity of the wife, and the legitimacy of
children.38 Ultimately, however, maternal dissections were performed to better understand the
female reproductive system and the process of childbirth, in the hope that new information in
these areas could result in changes of anatomical concepts or approaches that could potentially have further practical consequences in healing for the future generations. Like many judicial anatomies, maternal anatomies were most often performed on members of the wealthier classes of society, and at the request of patients or their relatives rather than by medical authority. If a woman was found to be ill she could, in a sort of “final act of maternal responsibility,”39 request the dissection and examination of her corpse after death in order to protect her husband or children.
Records of multiple such instances have been preserved. One Italian woman, Fiametta di
Donato Adimari, was anatomized in 1486 at the consent of her husband, Filippo di Matteo
Strozzi, after she had personally requested an autoptical examination to discern any signs of illness or disease that she might have passed on to the children. Her husband described, “I had the body opened…found her uterus full of putrefied blood, and that caused her death. And in addition, her liver was in very bad shape, together with her lungs, which had begun to attack her
37 Ibid., p. 63. 38 Ibid., p. 97. 39 Ibid., p. 149. 15
kidneys. So that if she had not died of this illness, she would have fallen into consumption.”40
By maternal dissection, physicians were able to determine her cause of death, and her husband could be consoled that his children were in no imminent danger of death from an illness or disorder passed to them through their mother. Records remain of other instances in which women asked for their own autopsies out of fear of hereditary diseases that might affect their children, or threaten the family lineage. In most of the cases the patients hoped anatomical investigation would help the family doctor determine what could help in prevention or cure of a certain illness. Physicians, too, expressed faith in the procedure; after the death of a boy he had inspected Bernardo Torni, professor of medicine in Pisa, wrote to the boy’s father in a consilium he prepared in 1496, saying, “it is bad to lose a child…worst of all to lose him by a disease not yet fully understood by doctors. But truly, for the sake of your other, remaining children, I think it will be of the greatest utility to have seen his internal organs.”41
Physicians were becoming more attentive to details of human anatomy, and this was
clearly of great aid in the diagnosis and treatment of different illnesses. At the same time, these
practitioners were also becoming more aware of the differences between the male and female
body, and the female body was considered to be especially mysterious, particularly in regard to the female reproductive system. The uterus was principally focused upon as it represented “the
ultimate frontier of the physicians understanding.”42 Due to its location in the body, and the
physician’s difficulty in accessing the organ, the uterus in many ways was an exemplary organ for the practice of dissection; information could not be gained about its structure or function in any other way than through direct inspection through dissection. The pregnant uterus remained
40 Excerpted from Filippo di Matteo Strozzi’s ricordanza, in Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), Carte Strozziane, 5, 22, fol.97r. As translated in Secrets of Women, p. 122. 41 Excerpted from Bernardo Torni’s Opuscoli filosofici e medici, ed. Marina Messina Montelli (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1982), p 40. As translated in Secrets of Women, p. 149. 42 Secrets of Women, p. 181. 16
an even greater mystery, as opportunities for its study were even rarer. Most executions of
pregnant female criminals were postponed until after the woman gave birth, and physicians thus often resorted to dissections of pregnant pigs or the rare excised fetus, both of which provided inadequate and often inaccurate information.43 Furthermore, the anatomist needed to dissect
more uteruses than any other organ before he could develop a seemingly-accurate understanding
of the composition and function of the organ. Clearly, this was not an easy task.
Jacopo Berengario da Carpi is one physician who took his interest in the mysteries of the
female body, and especially of the female reproductive process and birth, to an unprecedented
level in his determination to fix errors made by previous medical authorities, as well as to add
new anatomical knowledge of his own. A lector in surgery at the Studium in Bologna between
1502 and 1527, Berengario was a huge proponent of the idea that knowledge should be gained
from experimentation rather than from textual authorities. Anatomical texts to this point, he
argued, presented anatomical information inadequately, and it is for this reason that he wrote in
the dedication of his anatomical text Isagogue Breves, “there are few or none at all who now
understand this necessary and important art.”44 Driven by his fascination for the human
organism, he claimed to have personally “dissected hundreds of cadavers,”45 although he did
devote a large portion of his time and attention to the mystery of the fetus, a preoccupation
which, it seems, drove him to perform dissections without pause. Even hospitals, it is remembered, could not provide Berengario with an adequate supply of fetuses, and eventually he was forced to buy them covertly from midwives.46 But through his numerous dissections of
43 Ibid., p. 106. 44 Berengario da Carpi, Jacopo. Isagogue Breves. Translated by L.R. Lind. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1959, p. 35.
45 Ibid., p. 35. 46 The Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 236. 17
fetuses, and at different stages of development, Berengario gained a unique understanding of the
natural processes of fetal development as part of the process of human creation. A quick glance
at his chapter “Concerning the Non-pregnant uterus,” demonstrates that Berengario became quite
familiar with the composition of the uterus; the chapter includes his thorough observations on the
organ’s shape, structure, components, and function. Thus, working primarily in the privacy of
his home, Berengario succeeded in both correcting older authorities whose knowledge
concerning fetal development had proven inadequate – although in many ways he was still
misled by ancient traditions – and he was able to add new information to a field rarely pursued
previously. Still, Berengario also did not hesitate to speak proudly of the occasion on which he
exhibited the placenta of an executed woman “before almost five hundred students of our
University of Bologna…and also many citizens.”47 Although much of his work was performed in
private, Berengario demonstrates yet again that the practices of private and public dissection
were never fully separate as physicians and knowledge flowed back and forth between the two.
Once again we must, for a moment, consider an important change that took place as
maternal dissection became a more common practice. Traditionally the work of midwives and
physicians was quite separate: midwives assisted primarily in childbirth, and physicians treated a
number of illnesses and problems of the body, few of which concerned the female body and
especially the reproductive system.48 By the late fifteenth century, however, maternal dissection
had developed into a widely-accepted practice and physicians had become far more skilled in
addressing problems of the female body, such as infertility and illness during or after pregnancy.
It was also becoming increasingly important that a physician be present at every birth in case of
47 Excerpt from Berengario’s Commentaria, 1521. As translated in Ferrari, pp. 61‐2. Although his public demonstrations were apparently quite popular, views towards Berengario’s work became more critical when he directed his attention to the practice of vivisection, the opening of a body while the subject is still alive – Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 236. 48 Secrets of Women, pp. 99‐ 100. 18
miscarriage or other complication that might require the child to be extracted in a rough cesarean
section for a quick baptism. Midwives were sought less frequently as physicians came to
dominate the medical practice, providing assistance to both men and women, and, at the same
time, the attitudes of male physicians changed towards women in another way: what were
previously considered “secrets of women” became “secrets unknown to, rather than possessed
by, women.”49 Many male physicians had begun to see themselves as equal to, or even superior
to, women in terms of knowledge of the female body, and a sort of male monopoly developed
over information about the female body. The gap was widened further as new medical texts
including information about the female body were introduced to universities; because women
were largely illiterate and rare candidates for schooling, they formed the majority of those who
had no access to this knowledge.50 As with holy anatomies, here again we see how knowledge that was largely private at the start of the fifteenth century was becoming significantly more easily-accessible to the general public one hundred years later.
To this point we have seen that “private” dissection took on a number of forms as it addressed a variety of questions between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries: post-mortem investigations of the body, especially in the fully-developed form of Judicial Dissection, were used to find abnormalities that could explain the death of an individual, or to involve medical opinion in legal disputes regarding divorce and inheritance. Holy anatomies proved important in the canonization of saints and allowed for a more thorough examination of the human body than had been possible previously. Finally, maternal anatomies provided information that could be used practically, to understand illnesses affecting a particular family or family lineage. All of
49 Ibid., p. 116. 50 Ibid., p. 99. 19 these varieties of “private” dissection served still one more purpose: they were extremely important for physicians because of the general rarity of cadavers for the practice of “public” dissection that was developing congruently with private dissection. We will now focus our attention on this other practice of public dissection, as it too played a role in providing medical education and expertise as well as, we will see, a form of “spectacle.”
-Public Dissection-
-University Dissection
By the beginning of the thirteenth century the idea of academic dissection was beginning to bud. In the year 1238 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor 1220-1250, declared that all surgeons must study anatomy for one year before they could begin their practice, and ordered that there be at least one public dissection performed at the medical school of Salerno every five years.51 At this time, dissection was performed almost exclusively on animals, and it would be another sixty years before human dissection was introduced at universities. The first school to incorporate human dissection as part of the curriculum was the University of Bologna at the start of the fourteenth century, but over the next one hundred and fifty years it would spread throughout nearly the entire Italian peninsula. The earliest recorded human dissection in Padua was performed in 1341, in 1368 for Venice, in 1388 in Florence, in 1427 for Siena, 1457 for
Perugia, 1482 for Genoa, Ferrara shortly after although the precise year is not known, and Pisa in
1501.52 Although dissection was also practiced in a select number of French, German, and later
Dutch, schools, Italy birthed the practice. Yet while at many universities, again, statutes called for annual dissections for medical instruction, to provide a visual illustration of the anatomical
51 O’Malley, p. 2. 52 Ibid., p. 15. 20
concepts addressed in class for students working to memorize key anatomical texts;53 this does
not necessarily guarantee that the dissections were performed so regularly, especially when the
practice was still so young. By the sixteenth century, however, dissections had become more
regular and even in Rome, center of Papal power, they were performed at La Sapienza
University from 1521 onwards, and anatomy was established as an independent chair in 1584.54
As already mentioned, university dissection developed first at the University of Bologna,
due to the contributions of two major figures: Bartolomeo da Varignana (c. 1260-1321) and
Mondino de Luzzi (1270-1326). Bartolomeo, who studied and taught medicine at the University,
was the first individual to understand the importance of dissection and to make it academic.
After attending and participating in two of the earliest Bolognese internal inspections of the
human body, in 1302 and then in 1307, Bartolomeo realized that anatomical instruction was the
only way for future physicians to have the fullest understanding of the human body and its locis
profundis (“deep places”)55 where many illnesses were believed to originate. Although he
continued his private anatomical practice, maintaining a “lucrative medical practice among an
aristocratic clientele, and…political and medico-legal activities on behalf of the commune of
Bologna,”56 Bartolomeo also devoted much of his time and effort to the teaching of anatomy at
the University of Bologna through a new medium of public anatomical demonstration.
In 1316 Bolognese physician Mondino de Luzzi published his Anathomia, the first textbook of anatomical instruction based on the actual study of human dissection. It was a text
that would be used in universities for roughly the next two hundred years, proving largely
influential for a significant number of medical students and practitioners. Mondino organized
53 Carlino, p. 2. 54 Siraisi, p. 366. 55 Secrets of Women, p. 90. 56 Siraisi, pp. 104‐5. 21
the Anathomia as if it were an anatomical demonstration in itself,57 thus attempting to bring
information from the still generally-infrequent university dissections to a wider public.
Unfortunately, although Mondino had performed his own dissections, his text was hugely influenced by anatomical knowledge passed down from ancient authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen (fourth century BC and first century CE, respectively), which was overwhelmingly full of errors. Mondino had used dissection to demonstrate and experience for himself what those authors, particularly Galen, had described, rather than as an innovative tool for new discovery.58 Modern scholars reading this early anatomical text have noted how Mondino often
refers his reader directly to the older texts without even attempting to confirm the information
contained in them, much of which “could easily have been dissipated [by an honest and] careful
investigation…on the cadaver.”59 The numerous students using Mondino’s texts were, in
essence, simply studying a “diluted Galenism”60 filled with errors from a millennium before, and
public university dissection thus experienced a serious “stagnation in research”61 throughout the
fourteenth century since it was used primarily as a method of demonstration rather than for novel
investigation or discovery. Anatomy in general was considered “excess knowledge” at this time;
it was agreed that dissection could provide information to give insight into the human creature,
but it was not necessarily seen yet as something that could be used practically or necessarily for
“clinical benefit.” Dissection was a didactic tool in the study of anatomical texts but was not
reflected or practiced outside the course of teaching,62 thus creating a divide between the theoria
and practica – theory and practice – of anatomy. Anatomy was further limited by the fact that
57 Carlino, p. 170. 58 O’Malley, p. 13. 59 Carlino, p. 19. 60 O’Malley, p. 16. 61 Carlino, p. 4. 62 Ibid., pp. 149‐150. 22
professors were so significantly disconnected from the very procedure itself. During university
dissections, three people participated in the demonstration - a lector, a demonstrator, and a sector – who would, respectively, lecture on the material, indicate where incisions should be
made on the corpse, and actually cut the corpse. It was rare for university instructors to be
personally acquainted with anatomical material as they seldom opened cadavers with their own
hands, even if given the opportunity.63 We may naturally concur that there must have been a
number of university instructors who did begin experimenting on their own, but a professor’s
direct involvement was certainly not yet a part of the university anatomy lesson. Andreas
Vesalius, as we will later see, was the first major figure to combine the theoria and practica of
anatomy, assuming the roles of lector, demonstrator, and sector all together in one human figure.
The limitations of ancient authoritative texts became more apparent as investigation of
the human cadaver through dissection became a more regular practice. Medical practitioners
noted the commonalities and diversities of the human race and approached the body in a number
of ways as they attempted to learn more about the human being. Some practitioners, such as
Alessandro Benedetti, professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the University of Padua circa 1490,
argued that the subject of dissection should represent the most average human being, thus being
“of middle age, not thin nor obese, of taller stature, so that there may be available for spectators a
more abundant and hence more visible material for dissection.”64 Realdo Colombo, addressed previously in the discussion of holy anatomy, is at least one practitioner who agreed with him,
63 Ibid., p. 40. 64 Excerpted from Alessandro Benedetti’s The History of the Human Body, Book I: On the Usefulness of Anatomy, on the selection of a cadaver, and on the construction of a temporary dissecting theater, 1502. Full translation accessed in Lind, L.R. Studies in Pre‐Vesalian Anatomy: Biography, Translations, Documents. American Philosophical Society: Philadelphia, 1975, p. 83. 23
stressing the “uniformity of human bodies and the rarity of anatomical anomalies.”65 Others,
such as Berengario da Carpi, however, emphasized the importance of recognizing and
understanding the diversity of human subjects as determined by age, gender, sex, and population,
and even suggested that animal dissection be used for anatomical comparisons.66 It was generally agreed-upon by all practitioners, however, that an individual killed by hanging was
most ideal because the corpse would then be only minimally “mutilated.”67
The availability of human cadavers for public dissection proved inconsistent, however.
Whereas the different forms of private dissection discussed in Section II were generally
compatible with societal customs concerning family and bodily honor, as well as with funerary
practice – since the corpse was only minimally disfigured, and was then still presentable for a
traditional burial – public university dissection proved a threatening possibility. Numerous
authors have interpreted public dissection to be a sort of punitive practice, intended to prolong a
criminal’s suffering beyond their execution and even into death, but more recent studies have
concluded that there is little evidence to support this assertion.68 Still, because of the extensive public exposure of the subject’s naked body, public dissection was an uncomfortable procedure, and most especially for women, who at this time were expected to maintain their chastity and to stay out of the public eye as much as possible. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, public dissection resulted in a great maiming of the body and face of the subject, consequently requiring significant changes in funerary rituals, which were traditionally very important in maintaining family reputation.69 There developed an intense fear that a loved one might be displayed and
dissected publically, and, whereas private dissections were performed on the wealthier and
65 Siraisi, p. 288. 66 Ibid., p. 288. 67 Carlino, p. 94. 68 The Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 239. 69 Ibid., p. 234. 24
saintlier members of society in an act of reverence and respect, public dissections were
performed primarily on the bodies of executed criminals,70 provided to university medical
faculties by city authorities.71 In some cities, such as in Bologna, university statutes declared that
bodies be of foreigners from at least thirty miles away;72 on other occasions, the cadavers of
other “marginalized, ignoble, and despised people,” such as Jews and hospital patients, could be
used as well.73 Multiple accounts recall instances in which university students, fascinated and
inspired by the anatomical demonstrations they were given at school, stole corpses from graves
in order to perform their own dissections at home. Perhaps the most well-known example of this
is from 1319, when four students of Master Alberto of Bologna robbed the grave of a man
hanged as a criminal the day before. The students intended to hold an anatomy lesson much like
those they had attended before at school, and they were careful to select a corpse which
“belonged to the class of condemned criminals earmarked as appropriate anatomical subjects,”74 rather than a figure of higher authority for which such a procedure would have been sacrilegious.
Although I have labeled university dissection as “public,” there are certain elements of its early practice that complicate this categorization and prove further the difficulty in defining the break between private and public practice. These demonstrations were public because they were held in public institutions – namely, universities – but because the number of people who attended public dissections often consisted of only twenty to thirty students and “an assortment of ordinary townspeople and scholars interested in anatomy,”75 the demonstrations were still
performed for a considerably private audience. Specific reference to public dissection at the
70 A tradition that began with Herophilus in the third century BC ‐ Carlino, p.85. 71 The Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 230. 72 Ibid., p. 233. 73 Carlino, p. 95. 74 The Criminal and Saintly Body, pp. 236‐37. 75 Ferrari, p. 64. 25
University of Bologna does not appear in records until the fifteenth century, and even then these
procedures were often not officially included in the formal academic curriculum.76 The historical
record itself proves that the lines distinguishing private from public anatomical practice was
extremely hard to define or to maintain.
-Anatomical Theatres
Over time the audiences attending these early university dissections grew in size, and the procedure became a markedly more-public ordeal. By the sixteenth century, audiences at public dissections could be so large that special structures were built on which those attending could sit.
These “anatomical theatres” were initially temporary structures, often constructed in churches just before the event and disassembled immediately after, demonstrating a “hesitation [on the part of university officials] to provide a stable environment for a method of teaching and a discipline that had not yet achieved an autonomous and formalized status.”77 Even though these
demonstrations were sponsored by their home universities, officials seem to have been waiting to
gauge the public reaction before the practice could further grow in popularity.
The first permanent anatomical theatres were constructed in Italy at the end of the
sixteenth century and gradually began to replace the temporary ones previously used. The first
permanent theatre was built in 1594 in Padua, but theatres were constructed in Pisa and Bologna,
as well as abroad, throughout the following century as well.78 There is an unmistakable trend of a
growing popularity and widespread acceptance of the practice of public anatomical
demonstration throughout this period; dissections for small groups of twenty or thirty students
became increasingly rare as public dissection “transformed…from a lesson that was exclusively
76 Carlino, p. 175. 77 Ibid., p. 83. 78 Ferrari, p. 72. 26
devoted to the training of a class of doctors into a spectacle.”79 A German student, Baldasar
Heseler, described a public dissection he attended in 1540: “the anatomy lesson had been
organized…quite well and conveniently…There was a table on which the subject lay, and around
it four rows of seats constructed in a circle, so that almost two hundred people could see."80
G. Richter has made a systematic study and comparison of the anatomical theatres at
Padua and at Bologna and argues that the two served significantly different purposes: the former
is a response to primarily functional demands, the latter to eminently "spectacular" ones (refer to
figs. 1-2). At earlier theatres, such as in Padua, “students were forced to stand in six cramped
rows, one on top of another” whereas the Bolognese theatre built roughly fifty years later (its dates vary between 1637 and 1649) was characterized by “a large spacious room, its walls covered with engraved wood, inscriptions and sculptures” and more comfortable seats,81 suggesting that public anatomical demonstration was truly becoming a much more relaxed event, although it also illustrates the increasing “spectacularity” of the procedures. In Bologna, in 1586, a decree was passed providing for measures such as the appointment of several “particularly sober scholars” to stand at the door during anatomy lessons and ensure that “the theatre accommodate only doctors, scholars and other persons of good quality, who enter therein so that they may hear and learn, and not create an uproar, as sometimes occurs.”82
As this form of dissection progressed into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it
continued to lose its educational benefit. Those who attended public dissections at this point
were often the more uneducated members of society rather than those who were seeking to
79 Ibid., p. 26. 80 Excerpted from the diary of Baldasar Heseler, found and published by R. Eriksson, Andreas Vesalius’ First Public Anatomy at Bologna, 1540 (Uppsala, 1959), quote from p. 85. As translated in Ferrari, p. 62. 81 Ferrari, p. 76. 82 Excerpted from a decree promulgated by Cardinal Legate Salviati, 30 Jan. 1586. Held in Bologna State Archives, Assunteria di Studio, Anatomia publica, file 2. As translated in Ferrari, p. 70. 27
become personally involved in the anatomical practice,83 and disorderly conduct seems to have
been common. Dissections held during the winter festival of Carnevale, which was at the most
ideal time of the year for the preservation of a corpse because the cold weather could slow the
rate of bodily decomposition, seem to have been frequented regularly by citizens wearing their
festival masks to the demonstration. In other countries abroad, such as in Germany and Holland, dissections seem to have been approached with similar enthusiasm: by the end of the seventeenth century, in Germany, the anatomy instructor often warned the spectators “that in particular during the demonstrations of the female genitalia, they should contemplate everything with chaste eyes,”84 and laws passed in the seventeenth century in Amsterdam, which “stipulated that
the audience refrain from laughing and talking and that anyone caught in the act of helping
himself to organs…was fined the prohibitively high sum…Questions from the audience might be
submitted, provided that they were decent and of a serious kind,”85 help us reconstruct the
spectacle still further.
Although the educational benefit of public dissection was quickly disappearing, these
demonstrations were beginning to serve another purpose: prestige. In addition to the medical
students at the events, the attendees of public spectacles could include a range of important
figures from the courtly, civic, and ecclesiastical spheres as well, representing lay power as well
as spiritual.86 The demonstration of a “control over anatomical knowledge”87 became a means not only of self-promotion for physicians in search of a higher stipend88 but of the sponsorship of
83 Ferrari, p. 98. 84 Excerpted from B.B. Petermann’s Theses inaugurals medico‐forenses de Anatomia publica (Halle, 1703), fo. 3v. As translated in Ferrari, p. 99. 85 Heckscher, William S. Rembrandt’s Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp: An Iconological Study. New York University Press: Washington Square, 1958, p. 28.
86 Ferrari, p. 51. 87 Carlino, p. 228. 88 Ferrari, p. 94. 28
the university institution that was organizing the procedures. These events “dramatized the
cultural achievement of the city and its university for the benefit of both local and foreign
visitors”89 to the point that officials at some universities believed attendance at their school was
based largely on the demonstrations. It was for these reasons that civic authorities began to even
more-regularly “pamper the anatomy professors,”90 providing bodies for dissection even if it
meant interfering in a criminal’s sentence.91
The procedure of the public spectacles was beginning to change as well. Professors
would generally lecture on the different organs and systems of the body before demonstrating the
ideas presented in lecture on the cadaver. Perhaps the most important development to result
from this structure of public demonstrations was that the anatomy professor leading the
dissection was now actually expected to reply to questions posed him by those attending the
demonstration.92 This required that instructors be more familiar with their material, and that they
become more involved in the process of anatomical demonstration themselves. Still, many expressed continually harsh and critical opinions as to the scientific and educational gains resulting from the practice of public dissection,93 and many professors began to proclaim that a
new theatre was needed – one in which there would be a more private atmosphere and students
could gather around the table for better viewing. Some professors reverted back to an even more
personal and private approach, holding sessions for smaller groups of serious students or
colleagues either in their own homes, in hospitals, or in the homes of patients.94 And beginning
89 Secrets of Women, p. 167. 90 Ferrari, p. 94. 91 In one instance, for example, a man named Antonio Bagnoli da Bagni di Lucca, “had been condemned to prison for life, but…to satisfy the demands of the scholars, the cardinal legate overruled the decree that had already been passed, and had him condemned to death.” Ferrari, p. 88.
92 Ibid., p. 70. 93 Ibid., p. 89. 94 Secrets of Women, p. 168. 29
in the seventeenth century dissections could be held in “secret theatres” built especially for more
private dissections.95 Nevertheless, as Giovanni Ferrari, scholar of Italian anatomical theatres,
has written, “having outlived one by one its educational, promotional and scientific purposes,
[public anatomy] no longer had any reason to exist, not even as spectacle.”96 Anatomical demonstration was in crucial need of reworking and revitalization. The figure to initiate this change would be Andreas Vesalius.
-Andreas Vesalius-
To this point we have considered the practices of both private and public dissection in
Renaissance Italy, considering who was performing the procedures, where the dissections were held, what information was gained, and what resulted from the practice in terms of discovery, education, and even prestige. Furthermore, we have been able to conclude that the two fields are difficult to separate because practitioners, techniques, and information crossed the boundaries between the two. The figure who best demonstrates this fluidity between the two spheres of practice, however, is Andreas Vesalius, and it is to him that we now turn our attention.
Andreas Vesalius of Brussels (1514-1564), one of the most important figures in the history of anatomy, lived right in the middle of the Renaissance period in question. By the time he turned twenty the practice, especially in the form of public dissection, was already beginning to experience its problems of overcrowding and lack of professionalism. In a few short years
Vesalius changed the approaches and techniques of anatomical investigation, and challenged the blind acceptance of ancient authority so seriously that he is now considered “the founder of
95 Gabella Grossa, Libri segreti, 1/6, fos. 170‐1, 1664. Bologna State Archives. Mentioned in Ferrari, p. 90 footnote. 96 Ferrari, p. 106. 30
modern anatomy”97 and the one who “raised anatomy from the dead.”98 Although we have
previously encountered figures that blurred the lines between “private” and “public” forms of
dissection, like Berengario da Carpi and Bartolomeo da Varignana, Vesalius’ life is most
exemplary of this idea that, for the best work and most thorough knowledge, the two fields could
never be fully separate.
Born into a family of physicians, Vesalius’s medical career began as he enrolled at the
University of Paris in 1533, where “the faculty of medicine, like the entire University of Paris,
was exceedingly conservative;”99 Galen was the ultimate authority in the school. When Vesalius
became a student dissections were still fairly infrequent, and the practice had not yet gained the reputation it would in later years. This was the period when the lector would sit on his pulpit speaking while demonstrators and sectors performed the dissection below, and Vesalius quickly became a strong critic of this approach, stating in the preface of his famous text De humani corporis fabrica, “Hence it is that so many jibes are frequently cast at physicians and this very holy art is mocked.”100 Among other things, Vesalius would become the first major figure to
assume all three roles of lector, demonstrator, and sector, thus, again, reducing the long-standing gap between the theoria and practica of anatomy.
Vesalius’ talents in anatomy became apparent early in his education. He attended his third dissection at the University of Paris when he was only twenty, but quickly assumed the role of instructor rather than student. He described how, “at the urging of my fellow students and the teachers, [I] conducted [the dissection] publicly and more completely than was usually the
97 O’Malley, p. 1. 98 Secrets of Women, p. 247. 99 O’Malley, p. 43. 100 Preface to Vesalius’s Fabrica, from full text translation, O’Malley, p. 318. 31
case.”101 After having proved his skill in Paris, Vesalius returned to Brussels where, he describes,
he attended the autopsy “of an eighteen year old girl of noble birth who, because of an enduring
paleness of complexion and difficulty in breathing…was thought by her uncle to have been poisoned.” He continues: “Since the dissection had been undertaken by a thoroughly unskilled barber I could not keep my hand from the work, although for two crude dissections…at school in
Paris, I had never been present at one.” Yet despite his inexperience at performing such
procedures, Vesalius assisted the primary physician in the autopsy and concluded that “the
astonishing compression of the organs…appeared to us to be the cause of her ailment.”102 After
the attending ladies had left the room and Vesalius and the physician were alone with the corpse,
they dissected it further to satisfy other personal curiosities.
Vesalius gained a notable reputation, quickly. After the University of Paris he attended
the University of Padua from which he received his doctorate in 1537 and almost immediately
took over the chair of anatomy and surgery, bringing its prestige to great new and highly positive
attention. Over the next several years Vesalius was invited to perform public anatomical demonstrations in several locations, such as in Louvain and in Bologna (1540). After a successful demonstration at the university in Padua in 1543, Vesalius was invited to return again the following year. University archives recall the event describing, “because a year has already
passed since he made his last demonstration, everyone has had great desire to see him. His
audience gives testimony of the truth of this, for from the first day to the last he has had an
101 Ibid., p. 320. 102 Excerpted from Vesalius’s Epistola, rationem modumque propinandi radicis Chynae decocti…& praeter alia quaedam, epistola cuiusdam ad Iacobum Sylvium sententiam recensens, veritatis ac potissimum humanae fabricate studiosis perutilem: quum qui bactenus in illa nimium Galeno creditum sit, facile commonstret., Basel, 1546. As translated in O’Malley, p. 63. 32
audience of over 500 scholars.”103 And in January of 1544 Vesalius performed demonstrations in
Pisa for which there was, again, much excitement and preparation.
But the anatomical demonstrations Vesalius performed in Bologna in 1540 deserve
special attention because they were some of the most important of his entire career. One of the
main reasons for this is that at these dissections, when Vesalius was just twenty-six years of age,
he had already come to establish one of his most famous techniques of teaching: comparative
anatomy, in which the anatomy of one creature is compared to that of another. Besides
providing an opportunity to understand human anatomy in relation to those of other species, comparative anatomy also helped ease the shortage of available cadavers for dissection by providing a wider variety of subjects for physicians to work with. But Vesalius considered the technique important most of all because it provided a more thorough understanding of both human and animal anatomy. Vesalius preferred dogs, but used monkeys, amphibians and birds as well.104 The dissection in Bologna, held in the church of San Francesco where an anatomical
theatre had been constructed for the event, featured three human corpses as well as “six dogs and
other animals” from which nearly two hundred attendees would benefit.105
Vesalius’s early public demonstrations were instrumental to laying the foundation for the
writings of his famous text De humani corporis fabrica libri septum (“Seven Books On the
Fabric of the Human Body,” conventionally known as the Fabrica), but private dissections
Vesalius performed were equally important for the work, supplementing the knowledge he
gained from public demonstration. Vesalius actually considered private dissections to be vastly
superior to public ones in terms of educational benefit,106 and he used them often as a teaching
103 As translated in O’Malley, p. 197. 104 O’Malley, p. 117. 105 As translated in O’Malley, p. 99. 106 Carlino, p. 189. 33
technique. Although much of his work dissecting cadavers was done in absolute privacy, at
other times a select number of students might also attend for a sort of “private training.”
Vesalius considered his students to be “colleagues and assistants”107 and would encourage them to actively take part in the dissection, which could not be so easily done at a public event. It was
these private dissections, performed at night when they would not interfere with his daytime
lecturing duties, which contributed most to the innovative discoveries Vesalius would make
public through the publishing of the Fabrica. Our next move will be to consider the text of the
Fabrica, and what exactly it contained that overturned medical and anatomical practice so significantly.
-The Fabrica
In 1543 Vesalius first published his Fabrica, a text composed of seven books that aimed to describe every organ and system of the body in the most realistic and accurate way, correcting those “errors that had been passed down for a millennium”108 by the followers of Galen. Whether
Vesalius was aware of the effects his text would have on medical theory is uncertain, but the
Fabrica would overturn most of Galen’s outdated theories and set the ground for a new understanding of the human body from which medicine as a whole would need to be reworked.
Vesalius was not a dedicated opponent of Galen from the start; parts of the Fabrica certainly show Galenic influence, and Vesalius recalled at one point that it was only after the third time he lectured at Padua on Galen’s text On the bones “before [he] dared call attention to [Galen’s] mistakes.”109 Apart from recognizing and drawing attention to the fact that Galen had transferred
his observations of animal bone structure to a human model, Vesalius would also be the physician to confirm that the “bones of the aged differ from those of youth, and those of youth
107 O’Malley, p. 112. 108 Carlino, p. 205. 109 Excerpted from Vesalius’s Letter on the China Root, 1546. As translated in O’Malley, p. 111. 34
from those of children,”110 – a seemingly-obvious statement for modern thinkers, but in his time
even “simple” concepts such as this remained un-developed. By the time he was performing his
dissections in Bologna in 1540, however, Vesalius was already becoming a critic of Galen, and
without a doubt this was largely due to his use of comparative anatomy in his regular practice.
Combining his own experience dissecting human cadavers - privately and publicly - and his familiarity with the writings of older authorities, Vesalius was quickly able to distinguish between what medical knowledge was accurate and what ideas were mistakes that had survived centuries of medical practice. Unlike other practitioners of the time, including his own former
instructor at the University of Paris,111 Vesalius did not hesitate to expose Galen’s mistakes to
the public eye.
Galen’s major problem, in fact, had been that he did not actually perform any dissections
on human specimens. The majority of his work had been done with the Barbary ape, the animal
he considered most similar to the human, but, as we have seen, he then transferred this animal
anatomy to that human.112 Reading Galen’s texts nearly fifteen centuries later, Vesalius was able
to recognize the source of Galen’s errors, pointing out that Galen’s reliance on apes had caused
him to neglect at least thirteen muscles of the human hand,113 and more. As Vesalius performed
his own operations he came to understand that accurate knowledge of the human body could only
be gained through dissection and direct involvement in the examination of the specimen rather than through the study of any textual, or otherwise external, authority. In the preface of the
Fabrica Vesalius commented that “[his] intention [in writing the Fabrica] could by no means have been fulfilled if…when I was studying medicine in Paris, I had not put my own hand to the
110 Excerpted from the 1543 edition of Vesalius’s Fabrica, p. 27. As translated in O’Malley, p. 100. 111 Jacobus Sylvius of Paris. 112 Examples of how he related ape anatomy to human anatomy can be found in O’Malley, p. 85. 113 Excerpted from the 1543 edition of Vesalius’s Fabrica, 1.27. Siraisi, p. 260. 35
matter but had accepted without question the several casual and superficial demonstrations of a
few organs presented to me and to my fellow students…by unskilled barbers.”114 Vesalius’s
purpose in the Fabrica, then, was to demonstrate that Galen had been misled in numerous ways
by applying his observations on monkeys to the human cadaver, and to propose that all
knowledge should be verified on the actual subject for validity. Although Vesalius personally
taught these concepts to his students, he wrote the Fabrica so as to bring them to a wider public outside the University of Padua.115 He also prepared a shorter, simpler version of the Fabrica
called the Epitome, intended for those who were less, or not at all, familiar with anatomy, and
published it several months later in 1543.116
At its completion the Fabrica also proved to be a unique text because of its use of
illustration in the presentation of human anatomy. Berengario da Carpi, previously mentioned
with regard to his dissections of the fetus, was the first anatomist who understood that illustration
should be used to complement anatomical text, at the start of the fourteenth century.117 A look at
his most famous text Isagogue Breves (A Short Introduction to Anatomy, 1522) reveals a series
of images which show a man peeling away layers of skin and flesh to show the reader the
different layers of human anatomical structure and organization which are impossible to see with
the naked eye. The images are clearly more conceptual than factual – they are drawn very
simply, inaccurately, and the detail is lacking (refer to figs. 3-4) – reminding us of the tendency
of physicians at this time to present what ancient tradition would require, rather than what was
actually observed in dissection. Still, Berengario was able to recognize that such imagery could
114 Preface to Vesalius’s Fabrica. Full text translation offered in O’Malley, p. 320. 115 O’Malley, p. 113. 116 Ibid., p. 183. 117 Ibid., p. 20. 36
be a useful technique for those interested in the study of anatomy but unable to access a cadaver
or any sort of private or public demonstration.
The end of the fifteenth century, however, saw a “remarkable flowering of interest in
anatomy… [that was] not confined to doctors, but swept up contemporary artists and other
laymen”118 as well. Some artists, mostly throughout Italy, either became interested in attending
anatomical demonstrations, or chose to carry out dissections independently, in their efforts to
better understand the human body for more accurate artistic depiction.119 Leonardo da Vinci is
the most famous artist of the sixteenth century to have performed and attended human dissection, although few could afford to repeat the numerous operations he recommended for the most thorough and accurate understanding of human anatomy.120 Vesalius took advantage of this
growing interest and proficiency in artistic representation of anatomy, and included a plethora of
instructional illustrations in the Fabrica. Scholars examining these designs have recognized a
variety of artistic styles and qualities, but cannot determine just how many artists Vesalius found
to illustrate it. Vesalius, himself, apparently possessed some degree of artistic talent, and it is thought that he might actually have designed some of the simpler figures.121 The primary artist
he referred to in his career, however, was the “distinguished contemporary artist Joannes
Stephanus [of Calcar].”122
The Fabrica is full of illustrations, of different sorts and different themes. Each of the seven books, as well as their subdivided chapters, begins with historiated intial letters that depict
118 The Criminal and Saintly Body, p. 234. 119 Ferrari, p. 56. 120 Da Vinci outlined “a series of thirteen dissections that [he] considered essential to achieve anatomical understanding,” but few people had the opportunity to perform or attend them all. The thirteen he suggested were: one to examine the internal organs, three each to study the arteries and veins, membranes, muscles and ligaments, the skeleton, and individual bones ‐ Siraisi, p. 299. 121 O’Malley, p. 127. 122 Vesalius’s words, as translated in O’Malley, p. 85. 37
events related to the practice of anatomy, including, for instance, the stealing of corpses from
graves, their subsequent dissection, images of vivisection, and other scenes of surgical practice123
(refer to figs. 7a-d). Vesalius’ series of “muscle men” have received significant attention; following Berengario’s example in Isagogue Breves they show a male body stripped of its layers of flesh, muscle, and nerves, displaying increasingly deeper levels of the body to the viewer. In
Vesalius’ text, however, the figures are designed with far more attention to accuracy in detail.
This was a text, after all, intended for the instruction of those with no access to a true anatomical demonstration or to the study of it overall. The difference is quite profound when the two styles are examined side by side (refer to figs. 3-6).
The frontispiece of the Fabrica, one of the most famous images in the history of medicine, shows Vesalius himself in an anatomical theatre filled with spectators, delivering a public demonstration of dissection on the cadaver of a young woman (refer to fig. 8). The image is considered representative of how Vesalius’s Bologna dissections of 1540 must have proceeded; he stands in the midst of a spirited crowd, eager to touch the organs and see into the nature of their own bodies. The actual dissection this image was based around was performed on a female criminal who pleaded pregnancy in order to delay her execution. After several midwives examined her and concluded that she was not pregnant, the girl was executed and given for public dissection, in which Vesalius was able to verify before the public that the woman had indeed lied.124 In this image, too, Vesalius is depicted standing directly beside the
corpse, again stressing his unusual synthesis of lector, demonstrator, and sector into one. At the
foot of the table can be seen two assistants, presumably those who formerly would have been
conducting the operation. They are “still employed, but now reduced to lesser importance: their
123 O’Malley, p. 129. 124 Secrets of Women, p. 256. 38
function was to sharpen razors for the anatomist’s use.”125 Another of the most famous images of the text appears in the opening pages of the Fabrica and shows Vesalius demonstrating the workings of the forearm, hand, and fingers of a female cadaver (refer to fig. 9). This image has often been interpreted as depicting a private scene, at a location that resembles an “interior, domestic space” rather than a public arena, and it “illustrates the identification and mutual interaction of anatomist and cadaver, forcing the reader to confront dissection as the intimate encounter of two human bodies.”126 The pen and inkwell present at Vesalius’s side are also
elements which draw attention to the importance of descriptive writing as a part of the
anatomist’s work.127
Still, not all of the images Vesalius included in his Fabrica were accurate, especially in
the first edition of 1543; at that time he was still misled in many ways by ancient Galenic thought
and mistakes can be found in more than one of his illustrations, but they were useful for multiple
reasons. One thing that became a serious issue as new parts of the body were observed for the
first time, for instance, was terminology. The constant insufficiency in language and terms for
the new things being observed made it difficult to consistently convey ideas without the use of
images because “anatomical vocabulary had not been developed to the point where it was equal
to the full task of exposition.”128 The other benefit of illustration was that it presented anatomical
theory in visual form at a time when the scarcity of cadavers for dissection was a perpetual
problem.129 Aware that the majority of the public would have neither the time nor the opportunity to study anatomy and to view a true dissection, Vesalius was attempting to make
information as widely accessible and as fully instructive to the general public as possible.
125 O’Malley, p. 144. 126 Secrets of Women, p. 253. 127 Siraisi, p. 258. 128 O’Malley, p. 121. 129 Ibid., p. 121. 39
His illustrations had already proven popular among his students: Vesalius had used
images even in his first dissection in Padua, and they were welcomed with enthusiasm. Yet
although Vesalius knew that such illustrations were useful for a coherent understanding of
anatomy, and were excellent tools for the memorization of these new concepts, he warned that
they should never replace personal experimentation in dissection.130 Still, in an adventure in
publishing, several students stole a number of his illustrations in order to print them illegally.
Vesalius, however, took the initiative to personally send the woodblock images to Joannes
Oporinus, a friend and professor of Greek at Basel, accompanied by a letter in which he stated, “I shall attempt in every way in my power to hinder any inept person from reproducing the
illustrations which were made with so much labor for the general use of students…I urge that
they be employed by you as correctly and elegantly as possible,”131 demonstrating a concern
over the accurate preservation of his ideas and discoveries. Furthermore, as a creative and
resourceful researcher who combined illustration with deep and detailed description, Vesalius
made anatomical knowledge available to the public in a way that had not been accomplished
before.
It is improper to conclude without drawing attention to the progression of Vesalius’s life
and work after the publishing of his Fabrica, however, because it only further demonstrates his
remarkably thorough and honest application of anatomical knowledge and research. Vesalius
had begun teaching in his twenties, and published the Fabrica in 1543 at just twenty-eight years of age. Then, for over a decade after (roughly 1543-1555), Vesalius served as Imperial
Physician to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (ruled 1506-1556), during which time he
130 O’Malley, p. 85. 131 From Vesalius’s letter to Oporinus, 24 Aug. 1542, O’Malley, pp. 326‐7. 40
performed numerous autopsies and embalmed the bodies of several important figures. But his
most regular job during this time was in diagnosing and treating patients in a large geographic
range, from Paris to Augsburg, Germany.132 In short, after Vesalius had proven himself an
innovative thinker and instructor in the university setting, he continued his career by becoming a
medical practitioner, setting the best example possible for what every medical student could, and
should, do with his rare and extensive knowledge. Vesalius applied his medical skills in a wide
context, treating people practically, medically, scientifically, and using an honest and thorough
knowledge and familiarity with the human creature to serve the public in every way that he could
manage. For our dialogue there is no better figure to illustrate the idea that the practices of private and public dissection were, indeed, very rarely separate.
-Conclusion-
The dividing line between private and public anatomical practice in Renaissance Italy clearly is not one that can be very easily or cleanly defined. We have traced the use of dissection in private settings in the form of post-mortem autoptical investigation and judicial anatomy used to determine a person’s cause of death, and in holy anatomies performed in search of markings that would prove the sanctity of a holy individual for his or her canonization. We then further examined how private dissection in the form of the maternal anatomy could reveal information about illnesses which families feared might threaten their children and thus family lineage and inheritance. Public dissection, as we have seen, was developing congruently to the private practice, but it was used primarily for didactic demonstration in universities, as well as a sort of
“civic spectacle” organized for the prestige and recognition of the professors as well as the institution that had arranged the event. But, again, we have also seen that information about the
132 A detailed discussion of these years of Vesalius’s life can be found in O’Malley, pp. 187‐268. 41
procedure crossed the boundaries between public and private as texts containing information about dissections were published for public access, and as public practitioners became dissatisfied with the disruptive nature of the public spectacle to the point that they returned to more private settings in order to continue their practice and research. Lastly we have discussed
Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, the most important figure in the history of anatomy for a multitude of reasons: Vesalius would not only correct many of the mistakes of ancient authorities but he
would close the gap between anatomical theory and practice, develop a new and extremely
important technique of comparative anatomy, and would personally work dissecting hundreds of
cadavers in order to publish the most comprehensive, accurate, and illustrated anatomical text
known to that point. Vesalius would thoroughly change anatomical demonstration and
instruction in the university setting, and then continue on to demonstrate how it is possible to use
his knowledge and skill in a practical manner, serving royal authority and civic figures as
Imperial Physician for years of his life. Anatomical practice in Renaissance Italy then, we are
able to conclude, took on a variety of forms, each of which was approached in a unique way, and
targeted different information. It is improper, however, to attempt to divide the practice into two
strict categories – “private” and “public” – and to ignore the interchange between the two, for it
truly was the combination of techniques and the exchange of information that allowed the field to prosper and to develop to a point of accuracy that keeps it relevant today.
42
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Berengario da Carpi, Jacopo. Isagogue Breves. Translated by L.R. Lind. University of Chicago Press: Chicago 1959.
Carlino, Andrea. Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1999.
Ferrari, Giovanna. Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna, found in Past & Present, No. 117 (Nov., 1987), pp. 50-106. Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society.
Heckscher, William S. Rembrandt’s Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp: An Iconological Study. New York University Press: Washington Square, 1958.
Lind, L.R. Studies in Pre-Vesalian Anatomy: Biography, Translations, Documents. American Philosophical Society: Philadelphia, 1975.
O’Malley, C.D. Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964.
Park, Katharine. Chapter 11 on The Criminal and Saintly Body: Autopsy and dissection in Renaissance Italy (pgs 224-253) from The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad, edited by John Jeffries Martin, Routledge, New York, 2003.
Park, Katharine. Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection. Zone Books: New York, 2006.
Siraisi, Nancy G. Medicine and the Italian Universities 1250-1600. Volume 12 of Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Koninklijke Brill NV: Boston, 2001.
Vesalius, Andreas. De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Reprint of the 1543 ed. published by I. Oporinus, Basel. Held in UNR Special Collections.
------. Letter to Joannes Oporinus, 24 Aug. 1542. Full translation included in O’Malley, pp. 324-7.
------. Preface to the Fabrica. Padua, 1 Aug 1542. Full translation included in O’Malley, pp. 317-324.
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