ut it seems very clear
that even he must have dissected many more bodies than the number
usually attributed to him. Professor Lewis Stephen Pilcher of Brooklyn,
who made a special study of Mondino traditions in Bologna itself, and
collected some of the early editions of his books, feels so acutely the
absurdity of the ordinarily accepted tradition in this matter, that he
has written a paper on the subject bearing the suggestive title, "The
Mondino Myth." He says:[16]

"We are accustomed to think of the practice of dissection as
having been re-created by Mondino, and at once fully
developed, springing into acceptance. The year 1315 is the
generally accepted date for the first public anatomical
demonstration upon a human body made by Mondino, and yet it is
true that among the laws promulgated by Frederick II, more
than seventy-five years before (A.D. 1231), was included a
decree that a human body should be dissected at Salernum at
least once in five years in the presence of the assembled
physicians and surgeons of the kingdom, and that in the
regulations established for admission to the practice of
medicine and surgery in the kingdom it was decreed that no
surgeon should be admitted to practise unless he should bring
testimonials from the masters teaching in the medical faculty,
that he was 'learned in the anatomy of human bodies, and had
become perfect in that part of medicine without which neither
incisions could safely be made nor fractures cured.'

"Salernum was notable in its legalization of the dissection of
human bodies before the first public work of Mondino, for,
according to a document of the Maggiore Consiglio of Venice of
1308, it appears that there was a college of medicine at
Venice which was even then authorized to dissect a body every
year. Common experience tells us that the embodiment of such
regulations into formal law would occur only after a
considerable preceding period of discussion, and in this
particular field of clandestine practice. It is too much to
ask us to believe that in all this period, from the date of
the promulgation of Frederick's decree of 1231 to the first
public demonstration by Mondino, at Bologna in 1315, the
decree had been a dead letter and no human body had been
anatomized. It is true there is not, as far as I am aware, an