The Popes and Science: The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own TimeWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Religion
The Popes and Science: The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Popes; Religion and science -- History; Science -- History
Some of the details of the story have been doubted, but her memorial
tablet, erected at the time of her death {47} in the Church of San
Pietro e Marcellino of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Mareto, gives
all the important facts, and tells also the story of the grief of her
fiance, who was himself Mondino's other assistant. This was Otto
Agenius, who had made for himself a name as an assistant to the chair
of Anatomy in Bologna, and of whom there were great hopes entertained
because he had already shown signs of genius as an investigator in
anatomy. These hopes were destined to grievous disappointment,
however, for Otto died suddenly, before he had reached his thirtieth
year. The fact that both these assistants of Mondino died young and
suddenly, would seem to point to the fact that probably dissection
wounds in those early days proved even more fatal than they
occasionally did a century or more ago, when the proper precautions
against them were not so well understood. The death of Mondino's two
prosectors in early years would seem to hint at some such unfortunate
occurrence.
As regards the evidence of what the young man had accomplished before
his untimely death, probably the following quotation, which Medici has
taken from one of the old chroniclers, will give the best idea. He
said:
"What advantage indeed might not Bologna have had from Otto Agenius
Lustrolanus, whom Mondino had used as an assiduous prosector, if he
had not been taken away by a swift and lamentable death before he had
completed the sixth lustrum of his life!"
Further absolute proof that dissections were very common about the
time that Mondino made those which are recorded, and the mention of
which has led to the false assumption as to the rarity of dissection,
is to be found in the legal prosecution for body-snatching, which I
have already mentioned and which took place within five {48} years
after Mondino made the public demonstrations in dissection that are
the subject of discussion. It will be conceded by everyone that such
prosecutions for body-snatching are not likely to occur when only one
or two graves are violated a year, but are usually the result of a
series of such outrages, which arouse the community against them. We
prefer to give this bit of history once more in the words of Professor
Pilcher, who has argued this whole case for _the frequency of
dissection within twenty years after the bull that is supposed to have
forbidden it_ better than anyone else, and whose knowledge of Mondino
and his times is such as to make him an authority on the subject. He
has no interest in them, as I have said, either for or against the
Popes. His only idea is to bring out the real meaning of whatever data
we possess for the history of anatomy and dissection at this time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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