The first anatomical document emanating from the University of Bologna is, however, of still earlier date, and is the work of William of Saliceto (1210?–80). This writer was educated at Bologna, and it is claimed that he was the first to dissect the human body there.[155] His _Cyrurgia_, which was completed in 1275 (_editio princeps_, Piacenza, 1476), is divided into five books, of which the fourth and shortest is devoted to anatomy. Its descriptions are brief and concise. They are often clearly the result of actual observation, and they show hardly any trace of the absurd and irritating teleology that the influence of the Arabians and of Galen made customary in early anatomical literature. The anatomy of Saliceto appears to us very sensible and so far as it goes practical. It betrays the method rather of the Salernitan than of the Arabian anatomical writings, and is on the whole the best European work of the kind before the Renaissance. It was, however, soon replaced by the text-book of Mondino di Luzzi (1285–1327),[156] which, though inferior to that of Saliceto, held the field until the subject was revolutionized by Vesalius. [Illustration: Plate XXXIII. The FIVE-FIGURE SERIES BODLEIAN MS. ASHMOLE 399, about 1292 Fos. 18 r–22 r VEINS, &c. ARTERIES NERVES BONES MUSCLES] [Illustration: From the DRESDEN GALEN MS. Plate XXXIV. DEMONSTRATIONS OF ANATOMY Second half of XVth Century] Mondino was professor at Bologna till his death in 1327. His work, easily accessible in one of its many editions, ‘is corrupted by the barbarous leaven of the Arabian schools, and his Latin defaced by the exotic nomenclature of Avicenna and Rhazes’.[157] But it is not the language alone that has suffered. The schoolman’s attitude, well fitted for the classification of ideas, is an ill instrument for the investigation of Nature, and in the scholastic Mondino the very basis of scientific judgement is undermined, so that he readily accepts the views of the ancients against what must often have been the evidence of his own senses. The work, however useful to the contemporary student, was thus essentially reactionary as against the efforts of the earlier Salernitan anatomists and of William of Saliceto. This is the more remarkable because it is quite clear that he was accustomed to demonstrate on the actual body--a privilege denied to the early Salernitan school,--and he was, moreover, a popular and successful teacher. His work is a manual of dissection rather than a treatise on anatomy. This, added to its conciseness and brevity, strengthened its appeal to the ‘practical’ man--an epithet claimed then, as now, by the majority of stupid and unpractical people. The personal influence and enthusiasm of its author no doubt helped also towards the phenomenal success of this work, which for two hundred years held a position without rival as the text-book of the medical schools of Italy, where even as late as the sixteenth century Mondino ‘was still worshipped by