According to Mondino the heart is placed in the centre of the body. The valves he considers “wonderful works of nature”. He describes a right, left and middle ventricle. The right ventricle has thinner walls than the left, because it contains blood; the left one contains the vital spirit, which passes through the arteries to the body; and the middle ventricle consists of many small cavities “broader on the right side than on the left, to the end that the blood, which comes to the left ventricle from the right, be refined, because its refinement is the preparation for the generation of vital spirit, which should be continually formed”. Mondino describes five bones of the head, separated by three sutures—coronal, sagittal and occipital. The brain has two membranes: dura and pia. There are three cerebral ventricles—anterior, posterior and middle—and in these he locates the various intellectual qualities. He describes the cerebral nerves: olfactory, optic, motor oculi, facial, vagus, trigeminal, auditory and hypoglossal. He calls the innominate bone _os femoris_: the femur, _canna coxae_; the humerus, _os adjutori_; while the bones of both leg and forearm are named _focilia_ major and minus. [Illustration: ANATOMICAL DEMONSTRATION IN 1493 (Joannes de Ketham)] [Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF MONDINO’S ANATOMY BY MELERSTAT (Printed before 1500)] Like many anatomists who succeeded him, Mondino mingled surgical ideas with his anatomical statements. A break in the _siphac_ causes hernia and a swelling in the _mirach_. He treated ascites by puncture and evacuation, making a valve-like opening. Wounds of the large intestines must be sutured; if the wound be in the small intestines he advises that “you should have large ants, and, making them bite the conjoined lips of the wound, decapitate them instantly, and continue until the lips remain in apposition and then reduce the gut as before”. He gives an explanation of the length and convolution of the intestines; “for if it were not convoluted the animals would have to be continuously ingesting food and continuously defecating, which would impede engagement in the higher occupations”. Digestion is aided by black bile from the spleen and by red bile from the liver. The kidneys he regards as glands in which urine is extracted from the blood. The renal veins expand and form a fine membrane like a sieve through which the urine is filtered but blood cannot pass. He mentions renal calculi: if small they pass through the ureter; if large they are incurable except by incision, and this is to be avoided. The uterus and breasts are connected by veins, hence the sympathy between these organs. Inguinal hernia is to be operated upon; the spermatic cord and testicle may or may not be dissected out, or the hernia may be treated by the application of a caustic. An incision in the neck of the bladder will heal, because this part is muscular; but a cut in the body of the organ will not heal.