y
record of any such work, and commentators and historians of a
later date have, without exception, accepted the view that
none was done, and thereby heightened the halo assigned to
Mondino as the one who ushered in a new era. Such a view seems
to me to be incredible. Be that as it may, it is undeniable
that at the beginning of the 14th century the idea of
dissecting the human body was not a novel one; the importance
of a knowledge of the intimate structure of the body had
already been appreciated by divers ruling bodies, and specific
regulations prescribing its practice had been enacted. It is
more reasonable to believe that in the era immediately
preceding that of Mondino human bodies were being opened and
after a fashion anatomized. All that we know of the work of
Mondino suggests that it was not a new enterprise in which he
was a pioneer, but rather that he brought to an old practice a
new enthusiasm and better methods, which, caught on the rising
wave of interest in medical teaching at Bologna, and preserved
by his own energy as a writer in the first original systematic
treatise written since the time of Galen, created for him in
subsequent uncritical times the reputation of being the
Restorer of the practice of anatomizing the human body, the
first one to demonstrate and teach such knowledge since the
time of the Ptolemaic anatomists, Erasistratus and Herophilus.

"The changes have been rung by medical historians upon a
casual reference in Mondino's chapter on the uterus to the
bodies of two women and one sow which he had dissected, as if
these were the first and the only cadavers dissected by him.
The context involves no such construction. He is enforcing a
statement that the size of the uterus may vary, and to
illustrate it remarks that 'a woman whom I anatomized in the
month of January last year, viz., 1315 Anno Christi, had a
larger uterus than one whom I anatomized in the month of March
of the same year.' And further, he says that 'the uterus of a
sow which I dissected in 1316 (the year in which he was
writing) was a hundred times greater than any I have seen in
the human female, for she was pregnant and contained thirteen
pigs.' These happen to be the only reference to specific
bodies that he makes in his treatise. But