In the year 1315, in the old Italian city of Bologna, an event occurred which marks an important epoch in the history of medicine. A wondering crowd of medical students witnessed the dissection of a human cadaver—one of the few procedures of the kind that had occurred since the fall of the Alexandrian University. Acting under royal authority Mondino, a man far in advance of the age, placed the body of a female upon a table where for many centuries before only the cadavera of apes, of swine and of dogs had been studied. Mondino, known also as Mundinus, Mundini, Raimondino, or Mondino dei Luzzi, was descended from a prominent Italian family. Little is known of his life. The year of his birth is disputed; probably 1276 was near the time. He was graduated in medicine in 1290 and in 1306 he became a professor in the University of Bologna, holding his chair with credit until his death in 1326. Like that of the illustrious Homer, Mondino’s nativity has been claimed by several rival cities. Guy de Chauliac, writing in 1363, states that Mondino was a Bolognese: _Mundinus Bononiensis_ is Chauliac’s expression. Mondino’s method of teaching anatomy is known from Chauliac’s testimony:—“Mundinus of Bologna, wrote on anatomy, and my master, Bertruccius, demonstrated it many times in this manner:—The body having been placed on a table, he would make from it four readings; in the first the digestive organs were treated, because more prone to rapid decomposition; in the second, the organs of respiration; in the third, the organs of circulation; in the fourth the extremities were treated.” The innovation so auspiciously begun was not continued, and after the death of Mondino human dissections were made only at long intervals. The few instances in which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ecclesiastical and civil authorities granted the right to make dissections only prove the contention, that the practical study of human anatomy did not gain recognition until the sixteenth century. When Mondino began his dissections the epoch of Saracen learning had ended, but the influence of Arab medicine exerted by the writings of Albucasis, Avicenna and Rhazes had not declined. The Arabian physicians had accomplished little for anatomy. In this line the influence of Galen was still potent, and was rarely questioned until the publication of the _Fabrica_ of Vesalius in 1543. During a long period the little treatise of Mondino held full sway in the mediaeval schools. Medicine was taught in the University of Bologna, which as early as the twelfth century was celebrated for its departments of literature and of law. These studies were free of the difficulties which beset medicine. The prejudice against dissection was so great that for nearly a century after his death few men dared to repeat the acts of Mondino.