dent at Bologna. She took up first philosophy
and afterwards anatomy under Mondino. While it is not generally
realized, co-education was quite common at the Italian universities of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and at no time since the
foundation of the universities has a century passed in Italy without
distinguished women occupying professors' chairs at some of the
Italian universities. This young woman, Alessandra Giliani, of
Persiceto, a country district not far from Bologna, took up the study
of anatomy with ardor and, strange as it may appear, became especially
enthusiastic about dissection. She became so skilful that she was made
the prosector of anatomy, that is, one who prepares bodies for
demonstration by the professor.

According to the Cronaca Persicetana, quoted by Medici in his History
of the Anatomical School of Bologna:

"She became most valuable to Mondino because she would cleanse most
skilfully the smallest vein, the arteries, all ramifications of the
vessels, without lacerating or dividing them, and to prepare them for
demonstration she would fill them with various colored liquids, which,
after having been driven into the vessels, would harden without
destroying the vessels. Again, she would paint these same vessels to
their minute branches so perfectly and color them so naturally that,
added to the wonderful explanations and teachings of the master, they
brought him great fame and credit." This whole passage shows a
wonderful anticipation of all our most modern methods--injection,
painting, hardening--of making anatomical preparations for class and
demonstration purposes.

Some of the details of the story have been doubted, but her memorial
tablet, erected at the time of her death {47} in the Church of San
Pietro e Marcellino of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Mareto, gives
all the important facts, and tells also the story of the grief of her
fiance, who was himself Mondino's other assistant. This was Otto
Agenius, who had made for himself a name as an assistant to the chair
of Anatomy in Bologna, and of whom there were great hopes entertained
because he had already shown signs of genius as an investigator in
anatomy. These hopes were destined to grievous disappointment,
however, for Otto died suddenly, before he had reached his thirtieth
year. The fact that both these assistants of Mondino died young and
suddenly, would seem to point to the fact that probably dissection
wounds in those