In this picture the professor, a youthful figure perhaps intended to represent Mondino himself, is shown standing at a desk which hides his book. Around a corpse, laid on a trestle table before him, there cluster a number of men in doctor’s robes. Their valid faces are sufficient to convince us that the artist is here presenting us with portraits. One of the listeners has removed his robe and stands with upturned sleeves and knife in hand, ready to make the first incision on the direction of the doctor, who points to the part with a wand held in the left hand. In the impression of 1495 and in those of later date, the book appears above the desk, the attitudes of the students are somewhat changed, and many other details are altered. In all these, however, the blocks have been recut and the result is artistically inferior[150] (Fig. 3). [Illustration: Fig. 7. A FEMALE FIGURE LAID OPEN TO SHOW THE WOMB AND OTHER ORGANS From the 1493 Venice edition of ‘Ketham’ translated into Italian. This is the first printed anatomical figure drawn from the object.] The second plate from the 1493 Ketham with which we are here concerned is the outline of a female body, in a traditional pose,[151] laid open to exhibit some of the internal organs (Fig. 7). These had clearly been sketched from the object, and therefore this drawing, the first printed figure of its kind, may be said to introduce the new era for the investigation of the human frame. The anatomical renaissance had begun. Into a discussion of the full development of that age we cannot now enter. But the MS. of Manfredi, with which we have here to deal, was written at the very dawn of the new era and is itself one of its earliest documents. II. BOLOGNESE WORKS ON ANATOMY An organized Medical Faculty existed at Bologna at least as early as 1156,[152] though the first record of dissection there is of considerably later date. In February 1302 a certain Azzolino died under suspicious circumstances. Poison was suspected, an inquest was held and a post-mortem examination ordered. The investigation was conducted by two physicians and three surgeons, who unanimously agreed ‘that the said Azzolino assuredly met his death by no poison, but on the contrary, we assert that the quantity of blood collected in the great vein known as the _vena chilis_ [vena cava][153] and in the veins of the liver adjacent thereunto, has prevented the due movement of the _spiritus_ throughout the body, and has thus produced the diminution or rather extinction of the innate heat and thereby induced a rapid post-mortem discoloration. Of this condition we have assured ourselves _by the evidence of our own senses and by the anatomization of the parts_.’[154]