From the account given by Nicaise it appears that no regular instruction in anatomy was given in the University of Paris until after the fourteenth century, and then only from three to five times a year, when the body of a person who had been hung was publicly dissected. "Such a dissection lasted seven days and was a veritable scientific festival." No official cliniques were held and the only way in which the student of medicine could obtain some practical acquaintance with disease and with the methods of treatment was by attaching himself to a physician or a surgeon, or to a barber.
From the preceding brief and very incomplete account the reader will, I trust, be able to form some idea of the condition of affairs, medical and surgical, in Paris at the time when Lanfranchi arrived in that city.
Lanfranchi, says Neuburger, was born in Milan, Italy, and was undoubtedly the most distinguished among the pupils of Saliceto at Bologna. After leaving the medical school he practiced both medicine and surgery for a certain length of time in his native city; but finally, becoming involved in the quarrels between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, he—like many other Italian physicians—was obliged to take refuge in France. In Lyons, which was his first place of residence, he engaged for a short time in the practice of medicine and also wrote his first treatise on surgery—"Chirurgia Parva." Then, after traveling from one place to another in the provinces, he finally (1295 A. D.) settled permanently in Paris. In that city he very soon acquired a large practice, and, at the same time, built up for himself a great reputation as a teacher of medicine. The Collège de St. Côme elected him a member of that organization and profited greatly from the fame which his teaching brought to the institution. It is said that Jean Passavant, who was at that time the Dean of the Medical Faculty of Paris, aided Lanfranchi in his work by every means in his power. As a result Paris, during a considerable period of time, was one of the few places in which genuine clinical instruction was given to all those who desired to acquire a practical acquaintance with disease.
