but little from Roger's "Practica chirurgiae."[1] "It contains, however, the report of a case of penetrating wound of the chest in which Roland showed not a little courage by daring to cut off, flush with the skin, a portion of lung tissue which happened to protrude from the wound, and then applying a simple dressing."
The treatise known by the title "Glossulae quatuor magistrorum super chirurgiam Rogerii et Rolandi" was written by an unknown author or perhaps by several authors. It represents a collection of commentaries on the works of the two who are mentioned in the title of the book, and should probably be classed as a part of the literature of the Salerno School of Medicine.
Mondino the Anatomist.—Mondino, who was the first physician, after an interval of about fifteen hundred years, to revive the practice of dissecting human bodies, was born at Bologna at about 1275 A. D. He received his professional training at the medical school of his native city and was given the degree of Doctor in 1290, at the age of fifteen(!). Not long afterward he began to teach anatomy in the same institution and continued to serve in this capacity up to the time of his death in 1326. The physicians who aided him in his anatomical researches were Ottone Agenio Lustrulano, his prosector, and a woman named Alessandra Gilliani, from Perriceto.
Mondino's method of teaching anatomy was to deliver his lectures with the dissected cadaver directly before him; that is, he demonstrated the correctness of his statements as fast as he made them. (See Fig. 9.) Such a method was entirely new at the time and proved immensely popular, attracting students to Bologna in large numbers. Partly in this way and partly by means of the treatise on anatomy which he wrote ("Anatomia Mundini"), he became the instructor of numerous generations of physicians. His treatise remained the authoritative guide in anatomy up to the middle of the sixteenth century.
- ↑ According to Daremberg (Histoire des Sciences Médicales, Vol. I., p. 264) the title "Doctor" appears for the first time in the Preface of Roger's treatise (1180 A. D.).
