Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle AgesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Medicine, Medieval; Physicians
The details of this body-snatching case are strangely familiar to those
who know the history of similar cases before the middle of the
nineteenth century. The case occurred in 1319 in Bologna, just four
years after Mondino's public dissections. Four students were involved in
the charge of body-snatching, all of them from outside the city of
Bologna itself, three from Milan and one from Piacenza. In modern
experience, too, as a rule, students from outside of the town where the
medical college was situated, were always a little readier than natives
to violate graveyards. These four students were accused of having gone
at night to the Cemetery of St. Barnabas, outside the gate of San
Felice,--suburban graveyards were usually the scene of such
exploits,--and to have dug up the body of a certain criminal named
Pasino, who had been hanged a few days before. They carried the body to
the school in the Parish of San Salvatore, where Alberto Zancari was
teaching. The resurrection had been accomplished without witnesses, but
there were several witnesses who testified that they recognized the body
of Pasino in the school and students occupied with its dissection. If
evidence for the zeal of the medical students of that time for
dissection were needed, surely we have it in the testimony at this
trial. At a time when body-snatching has become a criminal offence
usually there have been many repeated occurrences of it before the
parties are brought to trial, so that it seems not unlikely that a good
many dissections of illegally secured bodies were being done at Bologna
at this time.
We know of a regulation of the University in force at this time, which
required the teachers at the University to do an anatomy or dissection
for students if they secured a body for that purpose. The students seem
to have used all sorts of influence, political, monetary, diplomatic,
and ecclesiastical, in order to secure the bodies of criminals.
Sometimes when they failed in their purpose they waited until after
burial and then took the body without leave. When we recall the awfully
deterrent condition in which bodies must have been that were thus
provided for dissecting purposes, it is easy to understand that the
enthusiasm of the students for dissection must have been at a very high
pitch. Certainly it was far higher than at the present day, when, in
spite of the fact that our dissecting-rooms have very few of the
old-time dangers and unpleasantnesses, dissection is only practised with
assiduity if special care is exercised in requiring attendance and
superintending the work of the department.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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