Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/351

 profitable combination of purely anatomical work of a primitive character and a search for evidences of pathological changes. The clinical history of the individual whose body was undergoing examination does not seem to have played any part in the investigation. Here is De Chauliac's account:—

After placing the dead body on a bench, my master proceeded with his instructions, devoting thereto four separate sittings. At the first of these he passed in review those parts or organs which are concerned in nutrition; his reason for considering them first being that they are the earliest to undergo decomposition. At the second sitting he devoted himself to the spiritual organs of the body; at the third, to the animal parts; and at the fourth, to the extremities. Following the example furnished by Galen in his commentary on the book entitled "The Sects," he maintained that there were nine things which should be taken into consideration when one examines the different parts of the body, to wit: their situation; their nature, color, bulk, number, and shape; their connections or relations; their actions and their utility; and the diseases which may affect them. Conducted in this manner the study of anatomy, he maintained, may prove helpful to the physician in recognizing diseases, in making prognoses, and in selecting a suitable plan for treatment.

Puschmann, quoting from Hyrtl, says that when Professor Galeazzo di Santa Sofia, who had been called from Padua to Vienna to fill the Chair of Anatomy in the medical school of that city, made his first public dissection of a human body (1404 A. D.) in the Bürgerspital, the sittings covered a period of eight days; at the end of which time he collected as much money as he could from those who had attended the course, and turned it over to the treasurer of the Faculty. Then followed a period of twelve years during which not a single public dissection of a human body was made in Vienna. In 1440 the Faculty were greatly rejoiced over the prospect of receiving from the authorities the body of a criminal who was to be hung on a certain day; but, when the time arrived and the body had actually been delivered to them, they were grievously disappointed by the sudden coming to life of the supposed