Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/377



from the gate. The gate-keeper returned in due time with the wine, and did not appear to have the slightest suspicion of the trick that we had played upon him. It was now three o'clock in the morning.

The control exercised by the authorities over the practice of dissecting human corpses differed very appreciably at different dates in different parts of Europe. Thus, for example, orders were issued to the Italian bishops during the latter part of the fourteenth century to put a stop to further dissections, and for a period of over one hundred years these orders accomplished the purpose desired. On the other hand, the Emperor Charles the Fourth adopted a more liberal course: from the year 1348 on he permitted dissections of human corpses to be made without hindrance in Prague, Bohemia, but his liberality in this particular appears to have been of little use, for there is no evidence to show that the knowledge of anatomy made any appreciable advance anywhere in Europe until after the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Gabriel Zerbi of Verona (1468-1505) published at Venice in 1502 the first modern treatise on human anatomy that deserves to receive special mention. Pagel speaks of it as containing fairly good descriptions of different parts of the body. Zerbi held the Chair of Medicine, Logic and Philosophy in the University of Padua, and lectured first in that city, next at Bologna, and finally at Rome. One incident in his career may prove of interest to the reader as showing the fearful risks to which a practicing physician in those days was sometimes exposed. The incident was of this nature:—

A wealthy pacha in Constantinople, failing to obtain relief from his malady at the hands of the native Turkish doctors, summoned an Italian physician from Venice. Zerbi, whom the ruling Doge invited to accept the summons, sailed immediately for Constantinople in company with his two sons who were mere lads. The treatment which he inaugurated proved promptly successful, and Zerbi, having been handsomely remunerated for his services, was already on his way back to Venice when his ship was overhauled by a swift-sailing caique on board of which were the sons of his recent