As the result of actual observation and patient study instead of idle theorizing there came a large number of great discoveries in anatomy. From Mondino to Morgagni there is a continuous series of great men in connection with the University of Bologna such as no other institution can show. About midway between the first and last came the great Vesalius, who taught at Bologna as well as at Padua and Pisa, and whose work on anatomy was to be a treasure for anatomists of all countries for many generations. It was while teaching at Bologna that Vesalius made the famous series of dissections which formed the subjects of the illustrations for his great work on anatomy. Titian, the celebrated Venetian artist, who had come down from Venice in order to study anatomy for artistic purposes at the famous school of anatomy and under the supervision of its great teachers, is said to have executed the plates for the book. The work remains a worthy monument of the two great masters in their respective professions whose collaboration created it. During the century before Morgagni's entrance into the University of Bologna, the distinguished English physician Harvey, who was to lay the foundation of modern physiology by the discovery of the circulation of the blood, was attracted to Bologna because of the opportunities it presented for {36} advanced work in the studies in which he was so much interested. While repeating some of the dissecting work that Vesalius had done Harvey was led to suspect the existence of the circulation and had his thoughts directed in the channel which finally led to his masterly exposition of the subject. In a word, here at Bologna the study of the physical side of life, so important a characteristic of latter-day science, became a distinct and recognized branch of science. As Professor Benjamin Ward Richardson said, in his sketch of the life of Morgagni, "Since that time there has been no decline in interest in these studies and medicine has been developed in a manner as daring in project as it has been useful in application." Bologna was, at the time, certainly an excellent place for Morgagni. He went there as an inquiring youth of fifteen and began his medical studies at once. He became a student of two of the most celebrated professors of the time--Albertini, a leader in his day, though since more or less forgotten, and Valsalva, whose investigations into the anatomy of the ear assure him a permanent place in the science of anatomy for all time. When Morgagni went to the university, Valsalva was at the zenith of his brilliant career as an anatomist. He was in the midst of his great work on the organ of hearing. This extremely intricate piece of human mechanism had never been understood before his time, and the working out of its details proved a time-taking but intensely interesting investigation.