The Popes and Science
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Title: The Popes and Science
Author: James J. Walsh
Release date: October 2, 2010 [eBook #34019]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
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[Transcriber's note]
This is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/popesscienceOOwals
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly
braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred
in the original book.
Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and
inconsistent spelling is left unchanged. Unusual use of quotation
marks is also unchanged.
Extended quotations and citations are indented.
Two sections in the Table of Contents and several entries in the
Index have been placed in the correct order.
Footnotes have been renumbered to avoid ambiguity, and relocated
to the end of the enclosing paragraph.
[End Transcriber's note]
SOME OPINIONS
THE POPES AND SCIENCE--The story of the Papal Relations to Science
from the Middle Ages down to the Nineteenth Century. By James J.
Walsh, M. D., Ph. D., LL. D. 540 pp. Price, $2.00 net.
Prof. Pagel, Professor of History at the University of Berlin: "This
book represents the most serious contribution to the history of
medicine that has ever come out of America."
Sir Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of
Cambridge (England): "The book as a whole is a fair as well as a
scholarly argument."
_The Evening Post_ (New York) says: "However strong the reader's
prejudice * * * * he cannot lay down Prof. Walsh's volume without at
least conceding that the author has driven his pen hard and deep into
the 'academic superstition' about Papal Opposition to science." In a
previous issue it had said: "We venture to prophesy that all who swear
by Dr. Andrew D. White's History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology in Christendom will find their hands full, if they attempt to
answer Dr. James J. Walsh's The Popes and Science."
_The Literary Digest_ said: "The book is well worth reading for its
extensive learning and the vigor of its style."
_The Southern Messenger_ says: "Books like this make it clear that it is
ignorance alone that makes people, even supposedly educated people,
still cling to the old calumnies."
_The Nation_ (New York) says: "The learned Fordham Physician has at
command an enormous mass of facts, and he orders them with logic,
force and literary ease. Prof. Walsh convicts his opponents of hasty
generalizing if not anti-clerical zeal."
_The Pittsburg Post_ says: "With the fair attitude of mind and
influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this
book becomes at once something to fascinate. On every page
authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement of the purely
theological publications."
Prof. Welch, of Johns Hopkins, quoting Martial, said: "It is pleasant
indeed to drink at the living fountain-heads of knowledge after
previously having had only the stagnant pools of second-hand
authority."
Prof. Piersol, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania,
said: "I have been reading the book with the keenest interest, for it
indeed presents many subjects in what to me at least is a new light.
Every man of science looks to the beacon--truth--as his guiding mark,
and every opportunity to replace even time-honored misconceptions by
what is really the truth must be welcomed."
_The Independent_ (New York) said: "Dr. Walsh's books should be read in
connection with attacks upon the Popes in the matter of science by
those who want to get both sides."
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES
MAKERS OF MODERN MEDICINE
Lives of the men to whom nineteenth century medical science owes most.
Second Edition. New York, 1910. $2.00 net.
THE POPES AND SCIENCE
The story of Papal patronage of the sciences and especially medicine.
45th thousand. New York, 1911. $2.00 net.
MAKERS OF ELECTRICITY
Lives of the men to whom important advances in electricity are due. In
collaboration with Brother Potamian, F. S. C, Sc.D. (London),
Professor of Physics at Manhattan College. New York, 1909. $2.00 net.
EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW
Addresses in the history of education on various occasions. 3rd
thousand. New York, 1911. $2.00 net.
OLD-TIME MAKERS OF MEDICINE
The story of the students and teachers of the sciences related to
medicine during the Middle Ages. New York, 1911. $2.00 net.
MODERN PROGRESS AND HISTORY
Academic addresses on How Old the New. New York, 1912. $2.00 net.
THE THIRTEENTH GREATEST OF CENTURIES
5th edition (50,000). 116 illustrations, 600 pages. Catholic Summer
School Press, 1912. Postpaid $3.50.
THE CENTURY OF COLUMBUS
Why Columbus Discovered America in 1492. Catholic Summer School Press,
1914. Postpaid $3.50.
THE DOLPHIN PRESS SERIES
CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE
First and second series, each $1.00 net.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Lectures on The Influence of the Mind on the Body delivered at Fordham
University School of Medicine. Appletons, New York, 1912. $6.00 net.
[Illustration: Portrait]
GUY DE CHAULIAC
"The Prince of surgeons" (John Freund). "The Modern Hippocrates"
(Fallopius). "His work is of infinite price" (Portal). "A masterpiece
of learned and luminous writing" (Malgaigne). "It is rich, aphoristic,
orderly, and precise" (Clifford Allbutt). "Chauliac laid the
foundation of that primacy in surgery which the French maintained down
to the nineteenth century" (Pagel).
Chauliac is a good type of a medieval papal physician. Two of his
well-known expressions were:
"Sciences are made by addition and it is not possible that the same
man should begin and finish them."
"We are like infants at the neck of a giant, for we can see all that
the giant sees and something more."
[End Illustration]
The Popes and Science
THE HISTORY OF THE PAPAL RELATIONS TO SCIENCE
DURING THE MIDDLE AGES AND DOWN TO OUR OWN TIME
BY
JAMES J. WALSH
K.C. St.G., M.D., Ph.D., LL.D. Litt.D. (Georgetown),
Sc. D. (Notre Dame)
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY AT THE CATHEDRAL COLLEGE, NEW YORK;
MEMBER OF THE GERMAN, FRENCH AND ITALIAN
SOCIETIES OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE,
THE ST. LOUIS HISTORY CLUB,
NEW ORLEANS PARISH MEDICAL SOCIETY,
NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE,
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
A.M.A., A.A.A.S., ETC.
NOTRE DAME EDITION
_ILLUSTRATED_
FIFTIETH THOUSAND
NEW YORK
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
1915
Copyright, 1908
James J. Walsh
First edition, 2,000 copies.
Second edition, 45,000 copies, 1910.
Third (English) edition, 2,000 copies, 1912.
Fourth (Notre Dame) edition, 1915,
enlarged and illustrated.
To
Professor ETTORE MARCHIAFAVA
_Papal Physician_
The worthy living representative of the great series of Papal
Physicians, the most distinguished list of names connected by any bond
in the history of science.
"Great additions have of late been made to our knowledge of the
past; the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has
gradually given way, and competing historians all over the civilized
world have been zealous to take advantage of the change. The
printing of archives has kept pace with the admission of enquirers;
and the total mass of new matter, which the last half-century has
accumulated, amounts to many thousands of volumes. In view of
changes and of gains such as these, it has become impossible for the
historical writer of the present age to trust without reserve even
to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student
finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled by the classics
of historical literature, and has to hew his own way through
multitudinous transactions, periodicals and official publications in
order to reach the truth.
"Ultimate history cannot be obtained in this generation; but, so far
as documentary evidence is at command, conventional history can be
discarded, and the point can be shown that has been reached on the
road from one to the other." (Preface of _Cambridge Modern
History_.)
{iii}
PREFACE
_A new edition of this volume being called for, I take the occasion to
place it under the aegis of the University of Notre Dame as a slight
token of gratitude for the formal recognition of the work by the
faculty of that institution, and bind this Notre Dame edition in the
University colors, blue and gold._
There is much more readiness at the present time to accept the
conclusions with regard to the relations of the Popes and science here
suggested than there was when the book was first published. Knowledge
of the general history of science has grown very materially in the
last ten years. Every increase in historical knowledge has shown more
and more clearly how utterly without foundation were many ideas which
had been very commonly accepted, particularly in English-speaking
countries, on the subjects here discussed. The supposed opposition to
the development of science on the part of the Popes and the Church is
now readily seen to have had no existence in reality, and popular
notions on the subject were due entirely to ignorance of the history
of science. There was supposed to be no scientific development and no
nature study until quite recent times. The generations immediately
preceding ours knew of none, and therefore concluded there must have
been none. They went even farther, and felt that since there had been
none, there must be some special reason for this lacuna in human
progress. The Church and the Popes were the favorite scapegoats for
human failings, so they were blamed. Now we know that there was a
magnificent development of science, not only in the Renaissance period
under the fostering care of the Popes and ecclesiastics, but also
during the old university times. What has come above all to be
recognized is that the medieval universities were _scientific
universities_. They paid more attention to the ethical and
philosophical sciences than we do, but they devoted a great deal of
time to mathematics and the physical sciences. Mr. Huxley, in his
inaugural address as Rector of the University of Aberdeen, declared
thirty years ago that the curriculum of these old universities was
better calculated to develop the many-sided mind of man than the
curriculum of any modern university. Above all, in surgery and in
medicine they did magnificent work. Anaesthesia, antisepsis, and the
natural methods of cure were all anticipated in the medieval time. At
the International Congress of Medicine last summer, a section on the
history of medicine was organized because it has come to be recognized
that very much that is even of practical value can be learned from
medical history.
The fact of the matter is that during the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries there was a great decadence of interest in
scholarship and true education. There is a distinct descent in human
culture at this time. Education was at its lowest ebb, hospitals {iv}
were the worst ever built, art and architecture were neglected, and
human liberty was so shackled that the French Revolution was needed to
lift the fetters from men's minds as well as bodies. They, in their
ignorance, spoke slightingly of old-time scholars. During the past
century we have come to a better knowledge of the Middle Ages, and he
is indeed a backward student of history who now thinks of them as
"dark." Our millionaires have gathered, at immense expense,
magnificent examples of the arts and crafts and beautiful books of the
medieval and Renaissance periods. Our binders imitate their books, our
artists study their works, we have revived their architecture and
literature, are imitating their social ideas until, instead of "the
dark ages," we have come to think of them as "the bright ages." What
is not generally realized is that they are just as bright in science
as they were in art, architecture, literature, and the arts and
crafts.
Literally, the Popes were as much the patrons of science as they were
of the arts. Professor White's book, "The Warfare of Science with
Theology," like Professor Draper's "History of the Conflict Between
Religion and Science," are now seen to represent simply an interesting
evidence of the lack of real knowledge of the history of science and,
above all, complete ignorance of details as to the genuine
accomplishment of the olden time on the part of the generation by
which they were taken seriously. Being quite sure that there was no
science to speak of in the older times, these writers gathered every
possible reference, found anywhere in secondary authorities, for they
almost never went to the original documents, as evidence for their
preconceived conviction that the Church must have suppressed science
whenever that was possible. The real history of science was ignored.
As soon as that is known there is no further question of Church
opposition, but, on the contrary, of the extent of ecclesiastical
patronage and encouragement of science.
Some of this very different story is told only too incompletely in
this volume. It would take many volumes to give all the details of it.
Readers will find here at least such references to the actual
documentary history as will form a good basis for definite knowledge
of the genuine relations of the Popes to science. The series of new
appendices in this edition, especially those on Papal Physicians,
Science in America, and the original Papal documents so often quoted,
but seldom seen entire, is meant to supply material for the correction
of many false notions that are unfortunately prevalent. They present
historical matter that has not been readily available hitherto in
English-speaking countries and that has nowhere been easy of access in
the form here given.
Appendix VII by Rev. Father Leahy on _The Fathers of The Church and
Science_ presents a controverted point of history to persuasion.
Appendix IX shows how amusing and amazing was Professor Draper's lack
of knowledge of the history of science and above all of medicine and
surgery when he wrote his "histories" that were so widely read and
accepted because we in America knew no better for the moment.
{v}
PREFACE
For years, as a student and physician, I listened to remarks from
teachers and professional friends as to the opposition of the Popes to
science, until finally, much against my will, I came to believe that
there had been many Papal documents issued, which intentionally or
otherwise hampered the progress of science. Interest in the history of
medicine led me to investigate the subject for myself. To my surprise,
I found that the supposed Papal opposition to science was practically
all founded on an exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo
incident. As a matter of history, the Popes were as liberal patrons of
science as of art. In the Renaissance period, when their patronage of
Raphael and Michel Angelo and other great artists did so much for art,
similar relations to Columbus, Eustachius, and Caesalpinus, and later
to Steno and Malpighi, our greatest medical discoverers, had like
results for science. The Papal Medical School was for centuries the
greatest medical school in Europe, and its professors were the most
distinguished medical scientists of the time. This is a perfectly
simple bit of history that anyone may find for himself in any reliable
history of medicine. The medical schools were the scientific
departments of the universities practically down to the nineteenth
century. In them were studied botany, zoology and the biological
sciences generally, chemistry, physics, mineralogy and even astronomy,
because of the belief that the stars influenced human constitutions.
The Popes in fostering medical schools (there were four of them in the
Papal dominions, and two of them, Bologna and Rome, were the greatest
medical schools for several centuries) were acting as wise and
beneficent patrons of science. Many of the greatest scientists of the
Middle Ages were clergymen. Some of the greatest of them were
canonized as saints. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas are typical
examples. At least one Pope had been a distinguished scientist before
being elected to the Papacy. For seven centuries the Popes selected as
their physicians the greatest medical scientists of the {vi} time, and
the list of Papal physicians is the worthiest series of names
connected by any bond in the history of medicine, far surpassing in
scientific import even the roll of the faculty of any medical school.
In a word, I failed to find any trace of Papal opposition to true
science in any form. On the contrary, I found abundant evidence of
their having been just as liberal and judicious patrons of science as
they were of art and education in all forms. I found also that those
who write most emphatically about Papal opposition to science, know
nothing at all of the history of science, and above all of medicine
and of surgery, during three very precious centuries. Because they
know nothing about it they think there was none, and go out of their
way to find a reason for its absence, while all the time there is a
wondrous series of chapters of science for those who care to look for
them. This is the story that I have tried to tell in this book.
This material is, I think, gathered into compact form for the first
time. No one knows better than I do how many defects are probably in
the volume. What I have tried to do is to present a large subject in a
popular way, and at the same time with such references to readily
available authorities as would make the collection of further
information comparatively easy. I am sorry that the book has had to
take on a controversial tone. No one feels more than I do that
controversy seldom advances truth. There are certain false notions,
however, which have the prestige of prominent names behind them, which
simply must be flatly contradicted. I did not seek the controversy,
for when I began to publish the original documents in the subject I
mentioned no names. Controversy was forced on me, but not until I had
made it a point to meet and spend many pleasant hours with the writer
whose statements I must impugn, because they so flagrantly contradict
the simple facts of medical history.
{vii}
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. 1
May Catholics dissect?
Supposed prohibition of dissection.
Twenty medical schools in Catholic Europe.
Medieval universities and medical education.
Allbutt on medicine down to the sixteenth century.
William of Salicet and Lanfranc, the great medieval surgeons.
The nearer to Rome the better the medical school.
The state of medical teaching and discovery.
The relation of the Popes to medical progress.
Supposed Papal prohibitions.
Ignorance of medieval medicine the reason for misrepresentation.
The Popes did not hamper medicine nor any other science.
Galileo's case an incident, not the index of a policy.
The Papal Medical School the greatest in the world.
The Papal Physicians leaders in science.
The Church did for science as much as for art and literature.
History a conspiracy against the truth. (Cambridge Modern History.)
THE SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF DISSECTION. 28
A new Catholic medical school and dissection.
Supposed Papal prohibitions of anatomy and of chemistry.
The bull of Pope Boniface VIII., De Sepulturis.
Reason for the ball.
Supposed misinterpretation.
Misuse of word infallibility.
Some history of dissection.
Date of bull important in history.
Mondino's work.
Body-snatching.
Dissections elsewhere.
How Mondino prepared his bodies for dissection.
Guy de Chauliac at Bologna sees many dissections.
Mondino's assistants, Otto and Alessandra.
Papal permissions to dissect.
The Church granting anatomical privileges
where civil authorities refused.
How the tradition of this Papal prohibition originated.
M. Daunou as an authority.
Reply of Pope Benedict XIV. as to bull.
This subject a type of certain kinds of history
THE STORY OF ANATOMY DOWN TO THE RENAISSANCE. 61
Presumed failure of anatomy during the Middle Ages a myth.
Famous Law of Frederick II.
Dissections at Salerno.
Taddeo and anatomy.
Salicet and Lanfranc.
A famous medico-legal autopsy.
{viii}
Mondino in the history of anatomy.
Roth's story of dissection.
Guy de Chauliac's experience at Bologna.
The story of dissection during the fourteenth century without a break.
Continued in next century.
The work of Berengar of Carpi, Achillini, Matthew of Gradi.
Pathological anatomy born with Benivieni.
Pres. White's attitude to the evidence for dissection at this time.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANATOMY.--VESALIUS. 90
The golden age of anatomy as of letters and art in Italy.
Not origin, but wonderful development.
Great predecessors of Raphael and Michel Angelo,
as of Vesalius and Columbus.
Legitimate culmination of anatomical development.
The pre-Vesalians, Mondino, Bertrucci, Chauliac,
Achillini, Berengar and Benivieni.
The English students, Linacre, Caius, Phreas.
Italy the Mecca of anatomical investigators.
Harvey and Steno.
Graduate work in Italy then as in Germany now.
Vesalius's career.
The University of Louvain.
Vesalius in Paris, in Italy.
The Father of Modern Anatomy.
Royal Physician to Charles V.
Some historical misconstructions.
What the Popes did for anatomy in the sixteenth century.
THE SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF CHEMISTRY. 120
False impression prevalent just as in anatomy.
Striking similarity of history-lie.
American writers.
The Papal decree.
Its purpose.
The gold-brick industry.
Fines to be distributed to the poor.
Pope John's bull, _Super Illius specula._
Appeal to historians of chemistry.
Chemistry in later Middle Ages.
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Raymond Lully,
Arnold of Villanova, the two Hollanduses, Basil Valentine,
Paracelsus and his ecclesiastical teachers.
Pope John XXII. a patron of science and of education
A PAPAL PATRON OF EDUCATION AND OF SCIENCE. 138
Pope John XXII. distinguished for his administrative abilities,
his learning and his abstemiousness.
Avarice and the Papal revenues.
Educational foundations from Papal revenues.
Modern educators and this old-time patron of education.
All great Popes subject of slander.
The personality of Pope John XXII.
Pres. White's astonishing declarations as to the
bull _Super Illius specula._
Pope John XXII. "a kindly and rational scholar."
His bull for the University {ix} of Perugia.
Perugia and the history of culture.
Standards in education.
Seven years for the doctorate in medicine.
Foundation of the University of Cahors.
Modern requirements.
Why the Pope favored education
THE CHURCH AND SURGERY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 167
Mistaken notions as to medieval surgery.
Supposed Church discouragement of surgery.
Misinterpreted ecclesiastical documents once more.
Gurlt on surgery during the Middle Ages.
Wonderful developments of surgery, when ignorantly said not to exist.
Allbutt and Pagel on the great surgeons of the Middle Ages.
Salicet.
Lanfranc.
Surprising anticipations of modern surgery.
Mondeville.
Surgical common sense.
Yperman.
Illustrations of surgical instruments.
Hydrophobia.
Chauliac the Father of Modern Surgery.
Place in surgery.
Chamberlain of the Pope.
Technics of surgery.
Chauliac's career.
Ardern, the English surgeon.
His works.
False impressions with regard to surgical history.
Professional jealousy not ecclesiastical persecution.
The college of St. Come and its lessons.
False traditions as to the Church and surgery and their meaning
PAPAL PHYSICIANS. 199
Belief in miracles and progress in medicine.
Prayer and healing.
The men the Popes chose as their medical advisers.
Names greater than those of the medical faculty of any university.
Guy of Montpelier, Richard the Englishman, Pope John XXI.,
Simon Januensis and the first medical dictionary.
Arnold of Villanova.
Guy de Chauliac.
Cecco di Ascolo.
Joannes de Tornamira.
Francis of Siena.
Baverius of Imola.
John de Vigo.
Columbus.
Eustachius.
Varolius.
Piccolomini.
Caesalpinus.
Malpighi.
Tozzi.
Lancisi.
Morgagni.
Contributions to the biological sciences from Papal Physicians.
THE POPES AND MEDICAL EDUCATION AND THE PAPAL MEDICAL SCHOOL. 222
Papal Medical School at Rome since 1300.
Supported by revenues from Popes at Avignon.
Previous Papal relations to medicine.
Monte Cassino and Salerno.
Pope Sylvester II. and medicine.
Medical schools and the ecclesiastical authorities.
A great physician made Pope.
The Renaissance and the re-established Papal Medical School.
Columbus original discoverer and practical teacher.
Attendance at his lessons.
His book dedicated to Pope.
Other medical dedications to Popes.
Eustachius's work.
Piccolomini as a great teacher.
Caesalpinus the probable discoverer of the circulation of the blood.
Father Kircher's work at Rome.
Malpighi the Father of Comparative Anatomy.
Tozzi the best teacher of his time.
Lancisi as a founder in clinical medicine.
On Sudden Death.
Morgagni's place as an adviser.
Bologna in the Papal dominions.
Medical schools at Ferrara and Perugia.
Protestant traditions with regard to the Popes and medicine.
{x}
THE FOUNDATION OF CITY HOSPITALS. 248
Pope Innocent III., the Father of City Hospitals.
Santo Spirito at Rome.
Virchow on the effect of this in Germany.
French hospitals and the Hotel Dieu.
English hospitals.
The five royal hospitals.
Virchow's tribute to Pope Innocent III.
Hospital regulation.
Care for the poor.
Longings of patients.
Religious nurses and modern nursing.
Virchow's opinion.
Contemporaries on hospital accomplishment.
Magnificent hospital building.
Models for all future time.
A modern architects's opinion.
Hospital decoration.
Siena Hospital.
Hospital abuses.
Problem of malingerers.
Leper hospitals.
The eradication of leprosy.
Lesson for our generation as to tuberculosis.
Special hospitals for erysipelas.
Benefit of segregation.
The religious dress and its anticipation of aseptic needs.
Hospitals ruined when taken from the Church and the religious.
THE CHURCH AND THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD. 281
The doubting mood so important for science supposed to preclude faith.
Most great scientists Catholics.
Francis Bacon, the supposed Father of Inductive Science.
Only the popularizer of the experimental method.
Bacon and Copernicus.
Gilbert of Colchester before Bacon.
Friar Bacon on the experimental method.
Peregrinus and the value of experiments.
Bacon's four grounds of human ignorance.
Bacon's great teacher, Albertus Magnus, and the experimental method.
Christian tradition as to scientific inquiry as begun by Augustine.
Albert's place in the history of inductive science.
Interest of the Middle Ages in physical science.
{xi}
CHURCHMEN AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES. 302
The Popes and the medieval universities.
What the scholastic philosophers did for science.
Scientific teaching at the early universities.
"Foundations of knowledge for Galileo, Harvey,
Newton and Darwin." (Allbutt.)
Magnetics.
Philosopher's stone and the transmutation of metals.
Constitution of matter.
Matter and form.
Indestructibility of matter.
Conservation of energy.
Albertus Magnus on the antipodes.
Humboldt's appreciation of Albert.
Albert's scientific accomplishments.
Astronomy, botany, geography and biological sciences.
Roger Bacon and explosives; achievements in optics and astronomy.
Aquinas and chemistry.
The relations of these men to the Popes.
Bacon's difficulties.
Medieval accomplishments in applied science.
Scientific applications in medieval cities (Kropotkin).
Decadence in science after Middle Ages.
The place of the reformation so-called.
The first encyclopedia.
Vincent of Beauvais and interest in his work.
Thomas of Cantimprato and Bartholomaeus Anglicus.
Craving for information in natural science.
THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY MAN AND SCIENCE. 340
Dante a type of the medieval university student.
His knowledge a proof of how he was taught.
Dante as a student of nature.
Ruskin's opinion.
Trobridge's suggestions.
Dante's early education.
Azarias and Kropotkin on the public schools of Florence and Nuremberg.
Kuhns on Dante's science.
Optics.
Astronomy.
Humboldt's praise of Dante's scientific knowledge.
Dante the observer, phosphorescence, flies, bees and ants.
Dante knew more science than any modern poet.
His contribution to the science of education.
THE CHURCH AND THE MENTALLY AFFLICTED. 363
Disease and supernatural agency.
Denial of disease.
Scientists and spiritualism.
Reaction in recent years.
Anticipations in psychiatry.
Supposed evolution of treatment of the mentally diseased.
Medieval care of the insane.
Psychopathic wards in hospitals.
The open door treatment.
After-care of the insane.
The colony system.
Religious suggestion and cure--ancient and modern.
Prayer and mental disease.
Care of the insane at Gheel.
Neglect {xii} of insane not exclusively medieval.
Milder measures quite modern.
Spiritual agencies in life.
Alfred Russell Wallace, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge,
Prof. Charles Richet, Lombroso.
APPENDIX I.
OPPOSITION TO SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 390
The Popes as patrons of scientific education.
Swift on genius and assinine opposition.
Allston on truth in unusual form.
"Nonsense" and "absurd" on scientists' tongues.
Jordan on human conservatism.
Galileo's letter to Kepler, on "logic" and science.
Huxley on Galileo.
De Morgan on other cases.
Dogmatism and folly.
Persecution of scientists.
Harvey, Vesalius, Servetus, Steno.
Not confined to old times, Jenner, Auenbrugger, Laennec,
Thomas Young, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Semmelweiss.
Opposition in other sciences.
Ohm.
Young men and discoveries.
Pasteur and rabies.
Our universities and economics.
Conservatism still active.
The lesson.
APPENDIX II.
LATIN TEXT OF PAPAL BULLS AND DECREES. 413
_De Sepulturis._
_De Crimine Falsi._
_Super Illius specula._
Bulls for erection of Universities of Perugia and Cahors.
APPENDIX III. 419
Emperor Frederick's Law Regulating the Practice of Medicine (1231)
APPENDIX IV.
CHURCH DECREES RELATING TO MEDICINE. 424
Prohibition of the study and practice of medicine and law to
members of religious orders.
Text of the decrees.
Significance of the prohibition.
Not all priests, but only members of religious orders involved.
Church decrees as to the physician's duty in securing the last
rites of the Church for his patients when in danger of death.
Text of the decrees.
Misunderstanding.
APPENDIX V.
PAPAL PHYSICIANS. 431
The principal Papal Physicians, their careers, and their chief
works. Ursus, Guy of Montpellier, Ricardus Anglicus, Taddeo {xiii}
Florentinus, Simon Januensis, William of Brescia, Arnold of
Villanova, Petrus Aichspadius, Gentilis Gentilis, Dino del Garbo,
Guy de Chauliac, Jean de Tornemire, Francis Casinus, John Baptist
Verallus, Ludovicus Scarampus, Bernard Garzonius, Laurentius
Roverella, Joannes Serninus, Simon Tebaldi, Jacobus Gottifredus,
Joannes Burgius, Sanctes Floccus, Sebastianus Veteranus, Onofrio de
Onofriis, John Philip de Lignamine, Benedict of Nursia, Petrus
Leonius, Alexander de Espinosa, Gaspar Torella, Petrus Pintor,
Horatio and Scipio Lancillotti, Joannes Bodier, Samuel Sarfati,
Antonius Petrutius, Dioscorides da Velletri, Bartholomeo of Pisa,
Bernardinus Speronius, Jerome Sessa, Clementius Clementinus,
Bartholomeo Montagnana, Giovanni Antracino, John de Vigo, Francesco
Fusconi, Andreas Cibbo, Andrea Turini, Ludovico Augeni, Paulus
Jovius, Matteo Corti (Curtius), Antonio Musa Brasavola, Silvius
Zeffiri, Jacobus Bonacossus, Joannes Manovelli, Thomas Cadimustus,
Tiberius Palella, Alfonso Ferri, Franciscus Frigimelica, Maggi, John
Baptist Cananus, Augustino Ricchi, Altamare, Bianchi, Simon Pasqua,
Pompeius Barba, Franciscus Gymnasius, Jerome Cardan, Mercurialis,
Placidus Fuscus, Andreas Baccius, Demetrius Canevarius, Malpighi,
Jerome Provenzalis, Jerome Rubeus, Jerome Cordella, Zecchius,
Caesalpinus, Michael Mercatus, Nicholas Masinus, Jacobus
Bonaventura, Julius de Angelis, Pompeius Caimus, Vincentius Crucius,
Giovanni and Bernardino Castellani, Julius Mancinus, Sylvester and
Thaddeus Collicola, Baldus Baldi, Paul Zacchias, Gabriel Fonseca,
Matthias Naldius, Borelli, Lancisi, Salvatorius, Romulus Spezioli,
Lucas Tozzi, Morgagni, Cotugno, Giambattista Bomba, Antonio
Baccelli, Flajani, Paolo Baroni, Pier Luigi Valentini, Giuseppe
Constantini, Castracane, Lapponi, Marchiafava.
APPENDIX VI.
ASTRONOMY AND THE CHURCH; SOME ROMAN ASTRONOMERS. 469
No formal list of Papal astronomers available. The roll of names in
astronomy connected in some way with the Popes almost as distinguished
as that of Papal Physicians: Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Nicholas of
Cusa, Regiomontanus, Toscanelli, Archbishop Antoninus, Clavius, the
Roman College, Scheiner, Ricci, Athanasius Kircher, Thomas Leseur,
Franz Jacquier, Boscovitch, Le Maire, Gilii, Beccaria, Piazzi, Secchi,
De Vico, Sestini, Denza, Lais, Rodriguez, Hagan.
{xiv}
APPENDIX VII.
THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE. 484
Supposed opposition of the Fathers of the Church to science.
Father Leahy on the true relations.
Defence of the Fathers.
Supposed opposition to science.
No opposition to true science.
Position as regards astrology.
What the Fathers did for science.
APPENDIX VIII.
SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 492
Spanish Catholic America far outdistanced English Protestant
America in the cultivation of science before our time.
Professor Bourne, on science at the Spanish-American Universities,
"Spanish-American science of the sixteenth century only reached
in English America in the nineteenth."
Dr. Chanca's letter.
Priority in medical education.
Bourne on Spanish-American anticipations.
Reasons for decadence.
APPENDIX IX.
THE DANGER OF A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE. 500
Professor Draper's "History of the Conflict Between Religion
and Science."
The tradition of Church opposition to science founded on
ignorance of the Middle Ages.
The "Bright," not the "Dark" Ages.
Draper's career.
"History of the Intellectual Development of Europe."
Acceptance of his writings as authoritative.
Lack of scholarship.
Medieval achievements.
"Lazy monks."
Wonderful work of the monks.
Monasteries as agricultural colleges.
The Arabs in science.
Medieval prophylaxis.
Magnificent hospitals.
Halley's comet.
The Popes of the beginning of the Renaissance: Nicholas V,
Calixtus III, Pius II (AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini).
Draper's summaries of history, caricatures.
Contrast between Spanish and English America.
Professor Bourne.
Sir Sidney Lee.
Professor Draper's philosophy of history.
The Church and social conditions.
Draper's surprising ignorance of the history of medicine.
Objections to the Church in her relations to science
always founded on lack of knowledge.
{xv}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Guy de Chauliac _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Guy de Chauliac's cauteries 182
Guy de Chauliac's cauteries 183
Guy de Chauliac's instruments 186
Guy de Chauliac's instruments 187
Hospital at Luebeck 252
Hospital at Tonnerre 268
Hospital, Mexico 272
Ferri's instruments _Page_ 447
Maggi's instruments _Page_ 448
Maggi's instruments _Page_ 449
Maggi's instruments _Page_ 450
Hospital, Mexico _Opp. Page_ 495
{1}
INTRODUCTION.
When, some years ago, the announcement of the prospective opening of
the medical school at Fordham University, New York City, was made, the
preliminary faculty were rather astonished to find that a number of
intelligent physicians expressed surprise that there should be any
question of the establishment of a medical school in connection with a
Catholic institution of learning, since, as they understood, the
Church forbade the practice of dissection, and in general was
distinctly unfavorable to the development of medical science. Most of
us had already known of the false persuasion existing in some minds,
that by a Papal decree the practice of dissection had been forbidden
during the Middle Ages, but it was hard to understand how men should
think, in this day of general information, that Catholics were not
free to pursue the study of any true science, and above all medical
science, without let or hindrance from ecclesiastical authorities. In
a word, though we live in what we are pleased to call an enlightened
age with the schoolmaster abroad in the land, as is so proudly
proclaimed, we encountered the most childish simplicity of belief in a
number of old-time prejudices as to the position of the Church with
regard to the study of science.
We found such a curious state of positive ignorance and such an
erroneous, pretentious knowledge with regard to the supposed attitude
of the Church to medicine especially, that we realized that the first
thing that the {2} new medical department would have to do would be to
set about correcting authoritatively the false notions which existed
with regard to the Popes and medical science. Most of the
misinformation in this matter in American minds, we soon found, had
its origin in Dr. Andrew D. White's volumes, "On the History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom." It is impossible for
anyone to read Dr. White's chapter on from Miracles to Medicine in
this work without coming to the conclusion that the constant policy of
the Church for all the centuries down practically to our own time was
to prevent the progress of medicine as far as possible. The reason for
this policy, presumably, must be taken to be that it was to the
interest of the ecclesiastics to have people apply to them for
healing. Sufferers were to look to miracles rather than to drugs for
their relief from ailments of any and every kind. Prayers were to be
considered as much more efficacious than powders, and Masses much more
likely to do good than the most careful nursing. These ecclesiastical
offices had to be paid for. Accordingly, people had to be discouraged
from applying to physicians, medical schools were kept under an
ecclesiastical ban, "dissection was prohibited," anatomy declared "a
sin against the Holy Ghost," "chemistry forbidden under the severest
penalties," "the medieval miracles of healing checked medical
science," "the practice of surgery was relegated mainly to the lowest
orders of practitioners and confined strictly to them," "as the grasp
of theology upon education tightened, medicine declined," and every
possible means was employed to keep the popular mind in subjection to
the clergy, and to prevent physicians from getting so much knowledge
as would enable them {3} to help free the people from the bondage of
superstition, of which they were the victims and the slaves.
We do not think that we exaggerate the impression likely to be
obtained from Dr. White's book in stating the ordinarily accepted
opinions thus baldly, and as a matter of fact, as the quotation marks
are intended to show, most of the strongest phrases that we have used
are Dr. White's own. For those who can take such statements in good
faith, it must be a very genuine surprise to learn a few facts from
the history of medicine in the Middle Ages. Before the beginning of
the sixteenth century, that is, before the religious revolt in
Germany, which has been dignified by the name of reformation,
altogether some twenty medical schools were founded in various parts
of Europe. Of these, the best known in the order of their foundation
were Salerno, Bologna, Naples, Montpelier, Paris, Padua and Pisa.
Excellent schools, however, were established also at Oxford, Rome,
Salamanca, Orleans and Coimbra. Even early in the fourteenth century
such unimportant towns as Perugia, Cahors and Lerida had medical
schools. These schools were usually established in connection with the
universities. It was realized that this would make the teaching of
medicine more serious and keep the practical side of medicine from
obscuring too much the scientific and cultural aspects of the medical
training. In modern times in America we made the mistake of having our
medical schools independent of universities, but with the advance in
education and culture we have come to imitate the custom of the
thirteenth and the fourteenth century in this regard.
The universities, as is well known, were the outgrowth of cathedral
schools. Practically all those in authority {4} in them, by far the
greater number of teachers and most of the pupils, were of the
clerical order, that is, had assumed some ecclesiastical obligations
and were considered to be churchmen. At these universities, if we can
trust the example of England as applicable to the Continent also,
there were, according to trustworthy, conservative statistics, more
students in attendance in proportion to the population than there has
been at any period since, or than there are even at the present time
in the twentieth century in any country of the civilized world. From
this we can readily appreciate the enthusiastic ardor of those seeking
education. Of these large numbers, the medical schools had their due
proportion. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: This subject of the attendance at the universities of the
Middle Ages is discussed, and authorities quoted, in my book "The
Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries," published by the Catholic Summer
School Press, N. Y.]
Of course it will be said at once that though there were medical
schools and medical professors and students, what was taught and
studied at this time was so far distant from anything like practical
knowledge of medicine, that it does not tell against the argument that
medical education was practically non-existent. Some people will
perhaps harbor the thought, if they do not frankly express it, that
very probably these schools were organized under ecclesiastical
authority, only in order to enable the Church and the clergy to
maintain their control of medical education and keep the people from
knowledge that might prove dangerous to Church authority. They were
thus able to satisfy some of men's cravings for information in these
matters, and yet prevent them from making such advances as would
endanger the Church's policy of having them apply for prayers and
Masses rather than for more physical remedies, {5} except possibly for
certain minor ailments. We do not doubt that there are many educated
people who would be quite satisfied to accept this as a complete
explanation of the situation in medical education at the medieval
universities. Those who have read Dr. White's "History of the Warfare
of Theology with Science" and have placed any faith in his really
amusing excursions into a realm of which apparently he knows nothing--
the history of medicine--must believe something like this. For them a
little glance at even a few of the realities of medical teaching in
the thirteenth century will show at once what a castle of the
imagination they have been living in.
Only those who are thoroughly and completely ignorant of the real
status of medical teaching in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
continue to hold these absurd opinions as to the nullity of medieval
medicine and surgery. The reading of a single short recent
contribution to medical history, the address of Professor Clifford
Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge,
England, before the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the Exposition
held in St. Louis in 1904, "On the Historical Relations of Medicine
and Surgery down to the Sixteenth Century," would suffice to eradicate
completely such traditional errors. He pointed out some surprising
anticipations of what is most modern in medicine and surgery in the
teachings of William of Salicet and his pupil Lanfranc, Professors of
Medicine and Surgery in the Italian Universities and in Paris during
the thirteenth century. As these two professors were the most
distinguished teachers of surgery of the period and the acknowledged
leaders of thought in their time, their teaching may fairly be taken
as {6} representative of the curricula of medieval medical schools.
William of Salicet, according to Professor Allbutt, taught that dropsy
was due to a hardening of the kidneys; _durities renum_ are his exact
words. He insisted on the danger of wounds of the neck. He taught the
suture of divided nerves and gave explicit directions how to find the
severed ends. He made a special study of suppurative disease of the
hip and taught many practical things with regard to it. He taught,
though this is a bit of knowledge supposed to come three centuries
later into medicine and history, the true origin of chancre and
phagedena. Most surprising of all, however, remains. William
substituted the use of the knife for the abuse of the cautery, which
had been introduced by the Arabs because they feared hemorrhage, and
he insisted that hemorrhage could be controlled by proper means
without searing the tissues, and that the wounds made by the knife
healed ever so much more kindly and with less danger to the patient.
In the matter of wound healing, he investigated the causes of the
failure of healing by first intention, and expressed on this subject
some marvelous ideas that are supposed to be of late nineteenth
century origin.
While it is usually said that whatever teaching of science was done at
medieval universities, was so entirely speculative or purely theoretic
and so thoroughly impractical as not to be of any serious use for life
and its problems, the utter falsity of such declarations can be seen
from the fact that William of Salicet insisted on teaching medicine by
clinical methods, always discussed cases with his students, and his
medical and surgical works contain many case histories. This is just
what pretentiously ignorant historians of medical education {7} have
often emphatically declared that medieval teachers did not do, but
should have done, in the Middle Ages. It is not surprising then to
find that William himself, and his great pupil Lanfranc, insisted on
the utter inadvisability of separating medicine and surgery in such a
way that the physician would not have the opportunity to be present at
operations, and thus gain more definite knowledge about the actual
conditions of various organs which he had tried to investigate from
the surface of the body. It is a very curious coincidence that both
the Regius Professors of Physic in England at the present time, our
own Professor Osler, now at Oxford, as well as his colleague,
Professor Allbutt, of Cambridge, have within the last five years
emphasized this same idea in almost the very words which were used by
William and Lanfranc nearly seven hundred years ago. Lanfranc went
even beyond his master in practical applications of important
scientific principles to medicine and surgery. He added to the means
of controlling hemorrhage. In arterial hemorrhage he suggested digital
compression for an hour, or in severe cases ligature. His master had
studied wounds of the neck. Lanfranc has a magnificent chapter on
injuries of the head, which Professor Allbutt does not hesitate to
call one of the classics of surgery. Lanfranc was thoroughly
appreciated by his contemporaries. After years of study and teaching
in Italy he was invited to Paris, where he became one of the lights of
that great university. Both Salicet and Lanfranc did their wonderful
work in scientific medicine down in Italy where ecclesiastical
influence was strongest. Italy continued to be for the next six
centuries always the home of the best medical schools in the world, to
which the most ardent students from {8} all over the continent and
even England went for the sake of the magnificent opportunities
provided. It was literally true, in spite of the tradition of Church
opposition to medical science, that the nearer to Rome the university
the better its medical school; and as we shall see, Rome itself had
the best medical school in the world for two centuries, while its
greatest rival, often ahead of it in scientific achievement, always
its peer, was the medical school of Bologna in the Papal States,
directly under the control of the Popes since the beginning of the
sixteenth century.
Dr. White has said just the opposite of this in a well-known passage
of his book, in which he assures his readers that "in proportion as
the grasp of theology upon education tightened, medicine declined; and
in proportion as that grasp relaxed, medicine has been developed." The
reason for such a statement is that he knew nothing about the history
of medicine and surgery in these medieval centuries and thought there
was none. This is a characteristic example of his mode of writing the
History of the (Supposed) Warfare of Theology with Science in
Christendom. This much will give some idea of the value of his book as
a work of reference.
After knowing something of these wonderful developments of medieval
medical science, it is to be hoped that no one will listen hereafter
to the ignorant assertions of those who talk of the suppression of
medical knowledge at this time. _William of Salicet and Lanfranc were
both of them clerics,_ that is, they belonged to the ecclesiastical
body and had taken minor orders, though they were not priests, as
priests were for obvious reasons not allowed to do surgical
operations, it being as repugnant to human feelings in the Middle Ages
as it is now, that {9} the messenger of Divine Mercy should handle the
knife and spill blood, or that the pastor of souls should come
straight from the operating room to bring consolation to the afflicted
and the dying.
Much more might be said about the wonderful medical teaching of the
thirteenth century. The men who made the universities what they have
continued to be down to the present time, had open minds for any great
advances that might come. Accordingly, when the histories of
anesthesia tell us that there was a form of anesthesia introduced
during the thirteenth century by Ugo da Lucca, and that even some
method of inhalation was employed for this purpose, it will be a
surprise only to those who have never properly realized all that our
educational forefathers of the early university days succeeded in
accomplishing.
Down at Montpelier, Gilbert the Englishman taught that small-pox
patients should be treated in rooms with red hangings, red curtains
being especially advised for the doors and windows. This is what
Finsen re-discovered in the nineteenth century, and for it was given
the Nobel prize in the twentieth century. He found that small-pox
patients suffered much less, that their fever was shorter, and that
the after effects were much less marked when only red light was
admitted to them. One may well ask what drugs did they employ, and
perhaps conclude that because they knew very little of drugs,
therefore they knew little of medicine. It is in the use of drugs,
however, that medicine has always been at its weakest, and we scarcely
need Oliver Wendel Holmes's declaration, that if all the drugs men
used up to his time had been thrown into the sea, they would be better
rather than worse off for it; nor Professor Osier's many {10} emphatic
protests with regard to our ignorance of drugs, to make the world of
the present day realize that a generation's use of them as a test
would tell quite as severely against the eighteenth or the nineteenth
century, as against the thirteenth or the fourteenth. They did use
opium, however, the drug having been introduced into general practice,
it is said, by a distinguished Papal physician, Simon Januensis.
Mandrake was employed, and has not as yet gone entirely out of use.
Various herbal decoctions were employed, and though these were used
entirely on empiric grounds, some at least of them have continued in
use with no better reason for their employment during most of the
centuries since.
The relation of the Popes to these advances in medicine may be best
appreciated from the interest which they took in the hospitals. It was
only in hospitals that cases could be properly studied, and the
medieval hospitals were conducted with very nearly the same relations
to the universities of that time as those that exist at the present
day. In the chapter on the Foundation of City Hospitals we show that
these institutions are all, as Virchow, who is surely an authority
above suspicion in any matter relating to the Popes has declared, due
to one great Pope. This is the best possible demonstration of supreme
humanitarian interest in human ills, and their treatment. Innocent
III., as we shall see, at the beginning of the thirteenth century
summoned Guy from Montpelier, where he had been trained in the care of
patients, and where the greatest medical school of the time existed,
to come to Rome and organize the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in the
Papal City, which was to be a model for hospitals of the same kind in
every diocese throughout the Christian world. Literally hundreds of
{11} these hospitals were founded during the thirteenth century as the
result of this initiative. Patients were not left to die, with only
the hope of prayers to relieve their sufferings, but they were cared
for as skilfully as the rising science of the time knew how and with
the tenderness that religious care has always been able to give. For
added consolation in the midst of their sufferings and as a fortifier
against the thought of death, they had religion and all its beautiful
influences, for which even Virchow, himself utterly unbelieving,
cannot suppress a tribute.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the University of the City
of Rome was founded by Pope Boniface VIII. Only a year or two later
the Popes removed their capital to Avignon. It has often been thought
that, because of this removal of the Papal capital, this University of
the City never came into existence; but we have definite records of
salaries paid out of the Papal revenues to professors of law and
medicine about the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century.
Down in the South of France, at Avignon itself, the Popes had for one
of their chamberlains the famous Guy de Chauliac, who is always spoken
of as the Father of Modern Surgery. One of the Popes of the Avignon
period founded the College of Twelve Physicians at Montpelier, the
foundation being sufficient to support twelve medical students, and by
adding the prestige of the Pope's patronage to the reputation of the
University, greatly encouraged attendance at it.
Another of the Popes of the Avignon period, Pope John XXII., who is
said by President White to have been most bitter in opposition to
every form of science, actually helped in the foundation of two
medical schools. {12} One of these was at Cahors, his birthplace, and
the other was at Perugia, at that time in the Papal States. In
founding the medical school at Perugia, Pope John insisted that its
standards must be as high as those of Paris and Bologna, and required
that the first teachers there should be graduates from Paris or
Bologna, where were the two greatest medical schools of the time.
Seven years of study, three in the undergraduate department and four
in the graduate schools, were to be required, according to this bull
of foundation (given in full in the appendix), before the degree of
Doctor of Medicine could be conferred. If it is recalled that this
standard of three years of undergraduate work and four in the graduate
school, or at least of seven years of University work, is the ideal
toward which our universities are struggling, and, it must be said,
not with the entire success we would like, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, then, it is surprising to think that the president
of a modern university, deeply interested in education in all its
features and himself a professor of history, should know so little of,
and be so lacking in sympathy with these men who laid the deep
foundations of our modern education.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the relation of the Popes to
medicine remains to be mentioned. If they really were the bitter
opponents of things medical that Dr. White would have us believe, then
we should expect that either there were no such officials as Papal
physicians, or else that the men who occupied these posts were the
veriest charlatans, who knew very little of medicine, and certainly
did nothing to develop the science. As a matter of fact, there is no
list of physicians connected by any common bond in history who are
{13} so gloriously representative of scientific progress in medicine
as the Papal physicians. The faculty of no medical school presents
such a list of great names as those of the men who were chosen to be
the official medical attendants of the Popes, and who were thus given
a position of prominence where their discoveries in medicine had a
vogue they otherwise could not have attained. The list of the Royal
physicians of any reigning house of Europe for the last seven
centuries looks trivial beside the roll of Papal physicians. Could the
Popes possibly have done anything more than this for medicine, or
shown their interest in its progress, or made people realize better,
that while prayer might be of service, every possible human means must
be taken to secure, maintain and recover health.
To read even the headings of Dr. White's chapter on from Miracles to
Medicine, in which he tells of how "the medieval miracles of healing
checked medical science," how "pastoral medicine held back scientific
effort," how "there was so much theological discouragement of
medicine," and finally, how "the study of Anatomy was considered a sin
against the Holy Ghost," in the light of this plain, matter-of-fact
story of the wonderful development of medical science in the
ecclesiastically founded and ruled universities of the thirteenth
century, makes one realize into what a farcical state of mind as
regards the realities of history such writers have forced themselves,
and unfortunately have led many readers, by their excursions into the
history of medicine and science. Probably there was never a more
pretentious exhibition of ignorance of the facts of history than is
displayed by these expressions and by the whole drift of this chapter.
Dr. White would have us {14} believe that the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries were so backward in medicine and surgery that
they practically have no history in these departments, or so little as
not to be worth talking about. The simple facts show us that this is
one of three or four great periods in human history in which there was
the most wonderful development of medicine and surgery.
As we shall see in the course of this book, there was no bull or any
other document issued by the Popes forbidding dissection or hampering
the development of anatomy in any way. As a matter of fact, the
ecclesiastics, instead of being behind their age in liberality of
spirit with regard to the use of the human body after death for
anatomical purposes, were always ahead of it. There has always existed
a popular horror of dissection, and this has manifested itself from
the earliest times in history down to and within the last half
century, in refusal to enact such secular legislation as would
properly provide for the practice of dissection. This was as true in
the United States until within the memory of men still alive as it had
always been hitherto in European history. Dissection came to be
allowed so freely in the medieval universities founded under
ecclesiastical influence and ruled by ecclesiastics, as the result of
the intelligent realization on the part of churchmen that the study of
the human body was necessary for a proper recognition and appreciation
of the causes of the ills to which flesh is heir. They realized that
the only way to lay the foundation of exact medical knowledge was not
only to permit, but to encourage the practice of dissection, and
accordingly this was done at everyone of a dozen medical schools of
Italy during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
nowhere more so than at the {15} Papal University at Rome itself
during the sixteenth century, at a time when, if we would believe Dr.
White, the Church authorities were doing everything in their power to
prevent dissection.
None of the other sciences allied to medicine were hampered in any
way, but, on the contrary, fostered and encouraged; and the devoted
students of science were prominent churchmen, some of whom were
honored with the title of saint after their deaths. In spite of
declarations to the contrary, chemistry was not forbidden by a Papal
decree or other document, though the practice of certain alchemists of
pretending to make gold and silver out of baser metals and thus
cheating people was condemned, just as we condemn the corresponding
practice of selling "gold bricks" at the present time. As will be made
very clear, the Pope who issued the decree that forbids such sharp
practices was a distinguished and discriminating patron of medical
education at the beginning of the fourteenth century, doing more for
it than any ruler for three centuries after his time; yet in doing so
he was only carrying out the policy which had been maintained by the
Popes before his time and was to continue ever afterwards.
Strange as it may appear when we recall how much has been said with
regard to Papal, and Church, and theological opposition to science,
the story that we have just told with regard to the Papal relations to
medicine and medical schools must be retold with regard to science in
every department, and the scientific studies at the great medieval
universities. Most people will find it even more difficult to accept
this than to reach a calm consideration of the Papal relations to the
medical sciences. Medicine is supposed to be the sort of practical
{16} subject that, in spite of prejudice, the ecclesiastical
authorities could not neglect and were not able to suppress. Science
in general, however, is supposed to be so distinctly opposed to what
was at least considered religious truth, that the Church could not
very well do anything else than prevent its development, or at least
hamper its progress to such an extent that it was only with the
lifting of the ecclesiastical incubus in our own day, that any great
scientific advances came in the physical sciences. This is an entirely
false impression emphasized by the ridiculous intolerance of writers
who knew practically nothing of the real history of science in the
Middle Ages, wrote their own prejudices large into the story of the
times, and did great positive harm to the cause of truth by a pretense
of knowledge they did not have, but which so many confidingly believed
them to possess.
But it will at once be said, what of Galileo? Does not his case show
the anti-scientific temper of churchmen? Nearly half a century ago,
Cardinal Newman in his Apologia characteristically observed that this
very case sufficed to prove that the Church did not set herself
against scientific progress, for this is the "one stock argument" to
the contrary, "the exception which proves the rule." Commenting upon
the Galileo incident, Professor Augustus de Morgan, in his article on
the Motion of the Earth in the English Encyclopedia, has expressed
exactly the same conclusion. He is an authority not likely to be
suspected of Catholic sympathy. He says:
"The Papal power must upon the whole have been moderately used in
matters of philosophy, if we may judge by the great stress laid on
this one case of Galileo. It is the standing proof that an authority
which has {17} lasted a thousand years was all the time occupied in
checking the progress of thought(!) There are certainly one or two
other instances, but those who make most of the outcry do not know
them."
There is no doubt that Galileo was prosecuted by the Roman inquisition
on account of his astronomical teachings. We would be the last to deny
that this was a deplorable mistake made by persons in ecclesiastical
authority, who endeavored to make a Church tribunal the judge of
scientific truth, a function altogether alien to its character which
it was not competent to exercise. The fact that this was practically
the only time that this was done serves to show that it was an
unfortunate incident, but not a policy. The mistake has been to
conclude that this was a typical case--one of many, more flagrant than
the others. This single incident has indeed made it impossible that
anything of the same kind should ever occur again. It was rather
because of the way in which Galileo urged his truths than because of
the truths themselves that he was condemned. Even Professor Huxley, in
a letter to Professor St. George Mivart, November 12th, 1885, said: "I
gave some attention to the case of Galileo when I was in Italy, and I
arrived at the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals
had rather the best of it."
Before as well as after Galileo's time scientific research was carried
on ardently in the universities, especially in Italy. In the chapter
on Science at the Medieval Universities, we call attention to the many
advances then made with regard to scientific questions in which the
world is very much interested at the present time. A hundred years
before Galileo's time Copernicus went down to Italy to study astronomy
and medicine, and {18} when his book was published it was dedicated to
a Pope. Copernicus himself was a faithful churchman all his life, came
near being made a bishop once, and kept the diocese in which he lived,
and in which his personal friend was bishop, in the fold of the Church
in spite of Luther and the religious revolt all around it in Germany.
One of the great scientists of the seventeenth century whose name is
stamped deeply on the history of science, Father Kircher, the Jesuit,
was invited to Rome the very year after Galileo's condemnation, and
for thirty years continued to _experiment_ and write in all branches
of science, not only with the approbation of his own order, the
Jesuits, which helped him in every way by the collection of specimens
for his museum, but also with the hearty good will of many cardinals
who were his personal friends, and with the constant patronage of the
Popes, whose generous liberality enabled him to make Rome the greatest
centre of scientific interest during this century.
At this time and during the preceding century the Roman University had
the greatest medical school in the world. The names of its professors
during the preceding century need only be mentioned in order to
emphasize this. They include such distinguished men as Eustachius and
Varolius, whose names are forever enshrined in the history of anatomy;
Columbus, who discovered and described the lesser or pulmonary
circulation half a century before Harvey's publication with regard to
the general circulation; Caesalpinus, to whom the Italians attribute
the discovery of the greater circulation before Harvey. In the next
century Malpighi was tempted to come to Rome to teach at the Papal
University, and the great Father of Comparative Anatomy {19} ended his
days in the Papal capital, amidst the friendship of all the high
ecclesiastics and with the social intimacy of the Pope. From the
beginning of the sixteenth century Bologna is a Papal city, but its
medical school, far from declining after it came under Papal
jurisdiction, was even more brilliant than before, and soon came even
to outshine its previously successful rival, Padua.
What we would say then, is that the story of the supposed opposition
of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to
science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken
notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the
exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those
who know nothing about the history of medicine and of science continue
to harbor it. That Dr. White's book, contradicted as it is so directly
by all our serious histories of medicine and of science, should have
been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been
taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even
professors of science who want to know the history of their own
sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be
led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and
emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can
possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation,
still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that
they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to
conviction.
We would not leave the impression, moreover, that it was in medicine
alone that the misunderstood Middle Ages made distinct progress in
science. This is true in every department of what we now call natural
science. {20} The reason for the false impression that science was not
studied in the Middle Ages at the universities, is that the supposed
historians of education and of science who have made such declarations
have never taken the trouble to look into the works of the great
writers of this period. Anyone who does so, at once changes his
opinion in this matter. Humboldt, for instance, the great German
natural philosopher, has given ample credit to these colleagues of
his, who lived some six centuries before him, yet did such wonderful
work in spite of their inadequate means and the fact that they were as
yet only groping in the darkness of the beginnings of science.
Whewell, the English historian of the inductive sciences, has also
proved sympathetic to these old philosophers, and especially to
Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon. Those who so ignorantly but with a
pretense of knowledge make little of the science of the Middle Ages,
know nothing of the real accomplishments of such men as Bacon,
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Arnold of Villanova, nor Vincent of
Beauvais, the encyclopedist. As is always the case, however, the
ignorance of supposed historians of science and education in this
matter, has only served to emphasize the presumptuous assurance of
their declarations as to the intolerance of the Middle Ages toward
scientific progress. It is ever the ignorant man who has the least
doubt about his opinions.
Unfortunately many students of science followed these writers
apparently without a hint of the deception that was being practiced on
them. Not infrequently the prestige or institutional position of the
writers has been enough to carry their works into a vogue which has
been heightened by the existence of religious prejudice and {21}
intolerance. Usually such motives are supposed to be far distant from
the scientific mind. In this case they have been, to some degree at
least, unconsciously present. There has unfortunately been a definite
persuasion that there could be nothing good in the Middle Ages, and
therefore there has been no surprise that evil should be found there.
Perhaps there is nothing sadder in present day education, than the
fact that serious students and professors of science should thus have
been led astray. Nothing shows more clearly the superficiality of our
education than the fact that these unfounded statements with regard to
the greatest period of education in history have been so universally
accepted with so little question.
A moment's consideration of the conditions in which the universities
developed will show how unreasonable is the thought that the Church or
the Popes were opposed to any phase of education.
It has come to be universally conceded in recent years that the Church
was the great patron of art and of letters during these centuries.
Without the inspiration of her teachings there would have been no
sublime subjects for artists; without the lives of her saints there
would have been much less opportunity for artistic expression; without
the patronage of the cathedral builders, the high ecclesiastics, and
above all the monastic orders, on whom, with so little reason, so much
contempt has been heaped, there would have been none of that great art
which developed during the centuries before what is called the
Renaissance. In literature, everyone of the great national poems that
lie at the basis of modern literature is shot through and through with
sublime thoughts that owe {22} their origin to the Church. We need
only mention the Cid in Spain, the Arthur Legends in England, such
works of the Meistersingers as Perceval and Arme Heinrich, the Golden
Legend, the Romance of the Rose, and Dante,--all written during the
thirteenth century alone, to illustrate Church influence in
literature. This is, as we have said, admitted by all. It is supposed,
however, that while the Church encouraged this side of human
development, it effectually prevented the evolution of man's
scientific interests.
As a matter of fact, however, the Church did quite as much for science
as for literature and art and charity, There has never been any
question that under her fostering care philosophy developed in a very
marvelous way. The scholastic philosophers are no longer held in the
disrepute so ignorantly accorded them in the last century. It is
recognized that scholastic philosophy represents a supremely great
development of human thinking with regard to the relations of man to
his Creator, to his fellow man, and to the universe. Even those who do
not accept its conclusions now, if themselves educated men, no longer
make little of those wonderful thinkers, but sympathize with their
magnificent work. Only those who are ignorant of scholastic philosophy
entirely, still continue to re-echo the expressions of critics whose
opinions were founded on second-hand authorities and who confessedly
had been unable to make anything out of the scholastics themselves.
This field of philosophy was the real danger point for faith and the
Church, yet its study was encouraged in every way, provided the
philosophers kept within the bounds of their subject.
Just exactly the same thing was true in the realm of natural science.
Strange as it may seem to those {23} who have allowed themselves to be
led into thinking that only for the last century or a little more have
men made observations on nature, and only comparatively recently have
the conclusions which they reached with regard to natural phenomena
been of any real significance, there is no doubt at all that men made
great achievements in physical science in the Middle Ages, some of
which unfortunately were lost sight of later, but many of which
remained to form the basis on which our modern scientific knowledge
has been built. In order to obtain a proper appreciation of this, all
that is necessary is to study the works of the investigating scholars
of the early history of the universities, and see how much that is
considered very modern they anticipated in their writings. They must
be read for themselves, not be judged by excerpts chosen by prejudiced
readers, much less by critics who were bent on not finding anything
good in the Middle Ages. There is need of sympathetic interpretation
to replace the ignorant contempt which has so far dominated this
period of the history of education. The precious lesson that men may
learn from the unfortunate misunderstanding, however, is how much
old-time prejudice still dominates the attitude even of scholars--nay,
even of scientists and educators, with regard to certain periods in
history.
To most people it will be utterly uncomprehensible, however, that
after all that they have heard about Church opposition to science and
Papal discouragement of education as dangerous to faith, there should
now be an absolute denial of the supposed grounds for the assertions
in this matter. Most readers, even among educated people, will be very
prone to think that their impressions in these matters cannot be
entirely wrong, and {24} that previous writers on the subject cannot
have been either deceiving or deceived. In all that relates to the
Roman Catholic Church, however, before the date of the so-called
reformation, it is important to remember that there came into
existence a definite body of Protestant tradition, the creation of the
reformers who wished to blacken the memory of the Old Church as much
as possible to justify their own apostasy, and who therefore spared no
means to pervert the facts of history or to exaggerate the
significance of historical details so as to produce this false
impression. Subsequent generations were oftener deceived themselves
than deceiving. They were sure that the Church was opposed to
education and to science, and consequently it was not hard for them to
read in certain incidents and documents a meaning quite other than
their actual significance, because this added meaning agreed with
their prejudices on these subjects.
Every advance in modern history, every modification of view that has
been brought about by the critical historical method of recent times,
has emphasized this point of view almost without exception. The
distinguished philosophic and historical writer, the Comte de Maistre,
in his Soirees of St. Petersburg about a century ago, declared that
"History for the last three centuries (1500-1800) has been a
conspiracy against the truth." Just about a century later the editors
of the Cambridge Modern History, in the preface to the first volume of
their monumental work, re-echoed the words of the Comte de Maistre
almost literally in a pregnant paragraph which deserves to be in the
note-book of everyone who is trying to get at the real truth of
history. They said:
{25}
"Great additions have of late been made to our knowledge of the
past; _the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has
gradually given way,_ and competing historians all over the
civilized world have been zealous to take advantage of the change.
The printing of archives has kept pace with the admission of
enquirers; and the total mass of new matter, which the last
half-century has accumulated, amounts to many thousands of volumes.
In view of changes and of gains such as these, it has become
impossible for the historical writer of the present age to trust
without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities.
The honest student finds himself continually deserted, retarded,
_misled by the classics of historical literature_, and has to hew
his own way through multitudinous transactions, periodicals and
official publications in order to reach the truth.
"Ultimate history cannot be obtained in this generation; _but, so
far as documentary evidence is at command, conventional history can
be discarded, and the point can be shown that has been reached on
the road from one to the other._"
The italics in this passage are ours, but the ideas they emphasize
will serve to show how necessary it is for most of us to give up the
supposed historical truth of the preceding generations and have an
open mind for the newer ideas that are coming in as the result of the
renewed consultation of original documents and primal sources of
information. The present volume is written entirely with the idea of
bringing out the facts of the relations of the Popes and the Church
and the ecclesiastics, especially of the centuries before the
reformation, to science and to scientific education. My own position
as a professor of the history of medicine has necessarily made medical
science very prominent in the book. This, however, far from being a
disadvantage, is really an {26} advantage, since the physical sciences
of the medieval times gathered mainly around medicine, and it was
chiefly physicians and medical students who devoted most time to them.
After a detailed study of the history of medical science in the Middle
Ages as well of its allied sciences, it becomes very clear that there
was no trace of Papal or Church opposition to science as science, and,
on the contrary, liberal patronage, abundant encouragement, and even
pecuniary aid for the development of scientific education in every
way.
What we have tried to give in this book, then, is the authoritative
refutation of the supposed prohibition of the cultivation of certain
departments of medical and allied sciences by the Popes, and
sufficient information to enable students and teachers of science to
realize that the ordinarily accepted notions with regard to opposition
to science in the Middle Ages are founded on nothing more substantial
than sublime ignorance of the facts of the history of science at that
time. There was no bull against anatomy or dissection; no bull against
chemistry; the Popes were the patrons of the great medical scientists
and surgeons; the Papal Medical School was one of the best in the
world and was sedulously fostered; the great scientists of the Middle
Ages were clergymen, and many of them when they died were declared
saints by the Church. The opposite impression is entirely a deduction
from false premises with regard to the supposed attitude of the Church
and churchmen. We shall furnish abundant authorities of the first rank
and of value as absolute as there can be in present day history as to
these questions. The consultation of these will furnish further
material for those who desire to have real knowledge of {27} the
history of science in a magnificently original and greatly fruitful
period.
{28}
THE SUPPOSED PAPAL PROHIBITION OF DISSECTION.
There is a very general impression that the Roman Catholic Church was,
during the Middle Ages, opposed to the practice of dissection, and
that various ecclesiastical regulations and even Papal decrees were
issued which prohibited, or at least limited to a very great degree,
this necessary adjunct of medical teaching. These ecclesiastical
censures are supposed to be in force, to some extent at least, even at
the present time. The persuasion as to the minatory attitude of the
Church in regard to dissection is so widespread among even supposedly
well-educated professional men, that, as we have said in the
introductory chapter, when there was question some time ago of opening
a medical school in New York City under Catholic auspices as a
department of Fordham University, a number of more than ordinarily
intelligent physicians asked: What would be done about the study of
anatomy, since in the circumstances suggested dissection would not be
allowed? This false impression has been produced by writers in the
history of science who have emphasized very strenuously the supposed
opposition of the Church to science, and as these writers had a
certain prestige as scholars their works have been widely read and
their assertions have been unquestioned, because it would naturally be
presumed that they would not make them without thorough investigation
of such important questions. Professional men are not to blame if they
have taken such statements {29} seriously, even though they are
absolutely without foundation. That statements of this kind should
have been made by men of distinction in educational circles and should
have passed current so long, is only additional evidence of an
intolerant spirit in those who least suspect it in themselves and are
most ready to deprecate intolerance in others.
Take a single example. Most of what is said as to the opposition of
the Church to medicine during the Middle Ages in A History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, by Andrew D. White
(Appleton's, New York), is founded on a supposed Papal prohibition of
anatomy and on a subsequent equally supposed Papal prohibition of
chemistry. These two documents are emphasized so much, that most
readers cannot but conclude that, even without further evidence, these
are quite enough to prove the contention with regard to the
unfortunate opposition of the Church to medical science. Without these
two presumably solid pillars of actual Papal documents, what is said
with regard to the Church and its relations to medical science in the
Middle Ages amounts to very little. Much is made of the existence of
superstitions in medicine as characteristic of the Middle Ages and as
encouraged by clergymen, but medical superstitions of many kinds
continue to have their hold on even the intelligent classes down to
the present day in spite of the progress of education, and in
countries where the Church has very little influence over the people.
Dr. White quotes with great confidence and absolute assurance a Papal
decree issued in the year 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII., which forbade
the mutilation of the human body and consequently hampered all
possibility of progress in anatomy for {30} several important
centuries in the history of modern science. Indeed, this supposed
Papal prohibition of dissection is definitely stated to have precluded
all opportunity for the proper acquisition of anatomical knowledge
until the first half of the sixteenth century, when the Golden Age of
modern anatomy set in. This date being coincident with the spread of
the movement known as the Protestant Reformation, many people at once
conclude that somehow the liberality of spirit that then came into the
world, and is supposed at least to have put an end to all intolerance,
must have been the active factor in this development of anatomy, and
that, as Dr. White has indeed declared, it was only because the Church
was forced from her position of opposition that anatomical
investigation was allowed.
Since so serious an accusation is founded on a definite Papal
document, it cannot but be a matter of surprise that those who have
cited it so confidently as forbidding anatomy, and especially
dissection, have never given the full text of the document. It is
practically impossible for the ordinary reader, or even for the
serious student of the history of medicine, to obtain a copy of this
decree unless he has special library facilities at his command and the
help of those who are familiar with this class of documents. Many
references have been made to this prohibition by Pope Boniface VIII.,
but no one has thought it worth while to give, even in a footnote, the
text of it. The reason for this is easy to understand as soon as one
reads the actual text. It has nothing to say at all with regard to
dissection. It has absolutely no reference to the cutting up of the
human body for teaching purposes. Its purpose is very plain, and is
stated so that there can be no possible {31} misapprehension of its
meaning. Here we have an excellent illustration of what the editors of
the Cambridge Modern History declared to be the breaking up of the
long conspiracy against the truth by the consultation of original
documents.
Through the kindness of the Rev. D. A. Corbett, of the Seminary of St.
Charles Borromeo, Overbrook, Pa., I have been able to secure a copy of
Pope Boniface's decree, and this at once disposes of the assertion
that dissection was forbidden or anatomy in any way hampered by it.
Father Corbett writes:
"The Bull De Sepulturis of Boniface VIII. is not found in the
Collectio Bullarum of Coquelines, nor is it incorporated in the
Liber Sextus Decretalium Divi Bonifacii Papae VIII., though it is
from here that it is quoted in the Histoire Litteraire de la France
(as referred to by President White). It appears in an appendix to
this sixth book among the Extravagantes, a term that is used to
signify that the documents contained under it were issued at a time
somewhat apart from the period this special book of decretals was
supposed to cover. The Liber Sextus was published in 1298. This
'Bull De Sepulturis' was not issued until 1300. It is to be found in
the third book of the Extravagantes, Chapter I."
Even a glance at the title would seem to be sufficient to show that
this document did not refer even distantly to dissection, and this
makes it all the harder to understand the misapprehension that ensued
in the matter, if the document was quoted in good faith, for usually
the compression necessary in the title is the source of such errors.
The full text of the bull only confirms the absolute absence of any
suggestion of forbidding dissection or discouraging the study of
anatomy.
{32}
"Title--Concerning Burials.[Footnote 2] Boniface VIII. Persons
cutting up the bodies of the dead, barbarously boiling them, in
order that the bones, being separated from the flesh, may be carried
for burial into their own countries, are by the very act
excommunicated.
[Footnote 2: See Latin text in full in appendix.]
"As there exists a certain abuse, which is characterized by the most
abominable savagery, but which nevertheless some of the faithful
have stupidly adopted. We, prompted by motives of humanity, have
decreed that all further mangling of the human body, the very
mention of which fills the soul with horror, should be henceforth
abolished.
"The custom referred to is observed with regard to those who happen
to be in any way distinguished by birth or position, who, when dying
in foreign lands, have expressed a desire to be buried in their own
country. The custom consists of disemboweling and dismembering the
corpse, or chopping it into pieces and then boiling it so as to
remove the flesh before sending the bones home to be buried--all
from a distorted respect for the dead. Now, this is not only
abominable in the sight of God, but extremely revolting under every
human aspect. Wishing, therefore, as the duty of our office demands,
to provide a remedy for this abuse, by which the custom, which is
such an abomination, so inhuman and so impious, may be eradicated
and no longer be practiced by anyone, We, by our apostolic
authority, decree and ordain that no matter of what position or
family or dignity they may be, no matter in what cities or lands or
places in which the worship of the Catholic faith flourishes, the
practice of this or any similar abuse with regard to the bodies of
the dead should cease {33} forever, no longer be observed, and that
the hands of the faithful should not be stained by such barbarities.
"And in order that the bodies of the dead should not be thus
impiously and barbarously treated and then transported to the places
in which, while alive, they had selected to be buried, let them be
given sepulture for the time either in the city or the camp or in
the place where they have died, or in some neighboring place, so
that, when finally their bodies have been reduced to ashes or
otherwise, they may be brought to the place where they wish to be
buried and there be interred. And, if the executor or executrix of
the aforesaid defunct, or those of his household, or anyone else of
whatever order, condition, state or grade he may be, even if he
should be clothed with episcopal dignity, should presume to attempt
anything against the tenor of this our statute and ordination, by
inhumanly and barbarously treating the bodies of the dead, as we
have described, let him know that by the very fact he incurs the
sentence of excommunication, from which he cannot obtain absolution
(unless at the moment of death), except from the Holy See. And
besides, the body that has been thus barbarously treated shall be
left without Christian burial. Let no one, therefore, etc. (Here
follows the usual formula of condemnation for the violation of the
prescriptions of a decree.) Given at the Lateran Palace, on the
twelfth of the calends of March, in the sixth year of our
pontificate."
The reason for the bull is very well known. During the crusades,
numbers of the nobility who died at a distance from their homes in
infidel countries were prepared for transportation and burial in their
own lands by dismemberment and boiling. The remains of {34} Louis IX.,
of France, and a number of his relatives who perished on the ill-fated
crusade in Egypt in 1270, are said to have been brought back to France
in this fashion. The body of the famous German Emperor, Frederick
Barbarossa, who was drowned in the river Saleph near Jerusalem, was
also treated thus in order that the remains might be transported to
Germany without serious decomposition being allowed to disturb the
ceremonials of subsequent obsequies. Such examples were very likely to
be imitated by many. The custom, as can be appreciated from these
instances from different nations, was becoming so widespread as to
constitute a serious source of danger to health, and might easily have
furnished occasion for the conveyance of disease. It is almost
needless to say to our generation that it was eminently unhygienic.
Any modern authority in sanitation would at once declare against it,
and the custom would be put an end to without more ado. There can be
no doubt at all then that Pope Boniface VIII. accomplished good, not
evil, by the publication of this bull. So anyone with modern views as
to the danger of disease from the foolish custom which it abolished
would at once have declared, and yet, by a perversion of its
signification, it came to be connected with a supposed prohibition of
dissection. For this misunderstanding Pope Boniface VIII. has had to
suffer all sorts of reproaches and the Church has been branded as
opposed to anatomy by historians(!)
Is it possible, however, that this bull was misinterpreted so as to
forbid dissection, or at least certain forms of anatomical preparation
which were useful for the study and teaching of anatomy? That is what
Dr. White asserts. He shows, moreover, in his History of {35} the
Warfare of Science with Theology, that he knew that the document in
question was perfectly inoffensive as regards any prohibition of
dissection in itself, but insists that by a misinterpretation, easy to
understand as he considers, because of the supposed opposition of
ecclesiastics to medical science, it did actually prevent anatomical
development. President White says: "As to the decretal of Pope
Boniface VIII., the usual statement is that it forbade all
dissections. While it was undoubtedly construed universally to
prohibit dissection for anatomical purposes, its declared intent was
as stated in the text; that it was constantly construed against
anatomical investigations cannot for a moment be denied."
If a misinterpretation were subsequently made, surely Pope Boniface
VIII. must not be held responsible for it; yet in spite of the fact
that Dr. White shows that he knew very well that this bull did not
forbid the practice of dissection, he does not hesitate to use over
and over again expressions which would imply that some formal decision
against dissection itself had been made, though this is the only Papal
document he refers to. He even goes so far as to say that "anatomical
investigation was made a sin against the Holy Ghost." He frequently
repeats that for three centuries after the issuance of this bull the
development of anatomy was delayed and hampered, and insists that only
that Vesalius at great personal risk broke through this Church
opposition, modern anatomy would never have developed. He proceeds
constantly on the theory that it was always this bull that was in
fault, though he confesses that if so, it was by a misunderstanding;
and the only fault he can find to attribute to the Pope is a lack of
infallibility, as he {36} calls it, because he was not able to foresee
that his bull would be so misunderstood.
I suppose we are to understand from this that Dr. White considers that
he knows the meaning of the word infallibility. It is not a hard word
to understand if one wishes to understand it. The meaning that he
gives it in this passage is so entirely different from its accepted
meaning among Catholics, that any schoolboy in any of our parochial
schools would tell him that the word was never used by Catholics in
the sense in which he here employs it. It is so misunderstood
popularly outside of the Church, and this Dr. White doubtless knew
very well. When a man uses a term in medicine in a different sense to
that which is ordinarily accepted, we consider him ignorant; but when
he deliberately uses it in another sense for his own purposes because
of a false significance attached to it in the popular mind, we have a
special name for him.
The whole matter, however, resolves itself into the simple question,
"Was dissection prevented and anatomical investigation hampered after
the issuance of the bull?" This is entirely a question of fact. The
history of anatomy will show whether dissection ceased or not at this
time. Now if those who so confidently make assertions in this matter
had ever gone to a genuine history of anatomy, they would have learned
at once that, far from this being the time when dissection ceased, the
year 1300 is almost exactly the date for which we have the first
definite evidence of the making of dissections and the gradual
development of anatomical investigation by this means in connection
with the Italian universities. This is such a curious coincidence that
I always call it to the attention of medical students in lecturing on
this subject.
{37}
The first dissection of which we have definite record, Roth tells us
in his life of Vesalius, was a so-called private anatomy or dissection
made for medico-legal purposes. Its date is the year 1302, within two
years after the bull. A nobleman had died and there was a suspicion
that he had been poisoned. The judge ordered that an autopsy be made
in order to determine this question. Unfortunately we do not know what
the decision of the doctors in the case was. We know only that the
case was referred to them. Now it seems very clear that if this had
not been a common practice before, the court would not have adopted
this measure, apparently as a matter of judicial routine, as seems to
have been the case in this instance. Had it been the first time that
it was done instead of having the record of the transaction preserved
only by chance, any mention of it at all would have appeared so
striking to the narrator, that he would have been careful to tell the
whole story, and especially the decision reached in the matter.
After this, evidence of dissection accumulates rapidly. During the
second decade of the century Mondino, the first writer on anatomy, was
working at Bologna. We have the records of his having made some
dissections in connection with his university teaching there, and
eventually he published a text-book on dissection which became the
guide for dissectors for the next two centuries. Within five years
after this we have a story of students being haled to court for
body-snatching for anatomical purposes, and about this time there was,
according to Rashdall in his History of the Universities, a statute of
the University of Bologna which required the teacher in anatomy to
dissect a body, if the students brought it to him. More than ten years
earlier than this, that is, {38} within ten years after the supposed
Papal prohibition, there are records of dissections having been made
at Venice in public, for the benefit of the doctors of the city, at
the expense of the municipal treasury. During the first half of this
century money was allowed at Bologna for wine, to be given to those
who attended the public dissections, and if we recall the state in
which the bodies must have been at a time when the use of
preservatives was unknown, we can well understand the need for it. All
this shows, as I have said, that the date of Boniface's bull (1300),
far from representing the eclipse of anatomy, actually fixes the date
of the dawn of modern practical anatomical study.
The most interesting question in this whole discussion is as to how
much dissection Mondino actually did during the second decade of the
fourteenth century. His book became the manual of dissection that was
in practically every dissector's hands for several centuries after.
Probably no book of its kind has ever been more used, and none
maintained its place as the standard work in this department for so
long. No less than 25 printed editions of it appeared altogether. It
would seem to be utterly improbable that the author of a text-book of
this kind could have made only a few dissections. There are a number
of historians who have claimed, nevertheless, that at most he did not
dissect more than three or four bodies. This is all that we have
absolute evidence for, that is to say, only these dissections are
recorded. It is easy to understand, however, that a professor of
anatomy might make even hundreds of dissections, and yet have
something to say only about a very few which happened to present some
special peculiarities. The absence of further records may readily be
accounted for also in {39} other ways. The art of printing was not yet
invented; paper had only just been discovered and was extremely
expensive, and many factors conspired to destroy any records that may
have been made.
Outsiders dipping into the history of medicine have made much of our
paucity of documentary evidence with regard to what Mondino actually
did, and have, when it suited their purpose, insisted that this first
author of a dissector's manual did but the three or four dissections
explicitly mentioned. Those who are more familiar with the history of
medicine, and especially of anatomy, are persuaded that he must have
done many. In the first class of writers is Prof. White, for instance,
who declares positively that Mondino did not dissect more bodies than
those of which we have absolute records. According to his emphatically
expressed opinion, the reason why the father of dissection did not
dissect more was because of ecclesiastical opposition. Even these few
dissections were due to some favoring chance or the laxity of the
ecclesiastical authorities, or Mondino might have paid dear for his
audacity. No one else, according to Prof. White, dared to encounter
the awful penalties that might have been inflicted on Mondino until
Vesalius, more than two centuries later, broke through "the
ecclesiastical barrier" and gave liberty to anatomists. Prof. Lewis S.
Pilcher, of Brooklyn, who has made a special study of Mondino and his
times, who has consulted that author's original editions, who has
searched out the traditions with regard to him in the very scene of
his labors in Bologna, thinks quite differently. Prof. White has a
purpose, that of minimizing the work done in anatomy during the
fourteenth century; Prof. Pilcher's only purpose is to bring out the
truth with regard to the history of {40} anatomy. In the Medical
Library and Historical Journal for December, 1906, Prof. Pilcher has
an article entitled The Mondino Myth, by which term he designates the
idea that Mondino dissected but a few bodies. He says with regard to
this subject:
"The changes have been rung by medical historians upon a casual
reference in Mondino's chapter on the uterus to the bodies of two
women and one sow which he had dissected, as if these were the first
and the only cadavers dissected by him. The context involved no such
construction. He is enforcing a statement that the size of the
uterus may vary, and to illustrate it remarks that, 'a woman whom I
anatomized in the month of January last year (1315 Anno Christi),
had a larger uterus than one whom I anatomized in the month of March
of the same year.' And further, he says, 'the uterus of a sow which
I dissected in 1316 (the year in which he was writing) was a hundred
times greater than any I had seen in the human female, for she was
pregnant, and contained thirteen pigs.' These happen to be the only
references to specific bodies that he makes in his treatise. But it
is a far cry to wring out of these references the conclusions that
these are the only dissections he made. It is quite true that if we
incline to enshroud his work in a cloud of mystery, and to figure it
as an unprecedented, awe-inspiring feature to break down the
prejudices of the ages, it is easy to think of him as having timidly
profaned the human body in his anatomizing zeal in but one or two
instances. His own language, however, throughout his book is that of
a man who was familiar with the differing conditions of the organs
found in many different bodies--a man who was habitually
dissecting."
{41}
As I think must be clear to any one who knows Mondino's book, no other
conclusion than this suggested by Prof. Pilcher can be drawn. This
opinion has been frankly stated, by every historian of anatomy in
recent years. Puschmann says it very clearly. Von Toeply is evidently
of the same opinion. These are the latest authorities in the history
of anatomy. No other conclusion than this could well be reached by
anyone who has studied the question seriously. Pilcher confirms this
in the article already quoted in the following paragraph:
"Salernum was not alone in its legalization of the dissection of
human bodies before the first public work of Mondino, for, according
to a document of the Maggiore Consiglio of Venice of 1308, it
appears that there was a college of medicine in Venice, which was
even then authorized to dissect a body once every year. Common
experience tells us that the embodiment of such regulations into
formal law would occur only after a considerable preceding period of
discussion, and in this particular field, of clandestine practice.
It is too much to ask us to believe that in all this period, from
the date of the promulgation of Frederick's decree of 1241 to the
first public demonstration by Mondino at Bologna in 1315, the decree
had been a dead letter and no human body had been anatomized. It is
true there is not, as far as I am aware, any record of any such
work, and commentators and historians of a later date have, without
exception, accepted the view that none was done, and thereby
heightened the halo assigned to Mondino as the one who ushered a new
era. Such a view seems to me to be incredible. Be that as it may, it
is undeniable that at the beginning of the fourteenth century the
idea of dissecting the human body was not a novel one; {42} the
importance of a knowledge of the intimate structure of the body had
already been appreciated by divers ruling bodies, and specific
regulations prescribing its practice had been enacted. It is more
reasonable to believe that in the era preceding immediately that of
Mondino, human bodies were being opened and after a fashion
anatomized. All that we know of the work of Mondino suggests that it
was not a new enterprise in which he was a pioneer, but rather that
he brought to an old practice a new enthusiasm and better methods,
which, caught on the rising wave of interest in medical teaching at
Bologna, and preserved by his own energy as a writer in the first
original systematic treatise written since the time of Galen,
created for him in subsequent uncritical times the reputation of
being the restorer of the practice of anatomizing the human body,
the first one to demonstrate and teach such knowledge since the time
of the Ptolemaic anatomists, Erasistratus and Herophilus."
In order to show that Mondino did not perform only the two or three
dissections which he himself for special reasons mentions, but many
more, Professor Pilcher has made a series of quotations from the
Bolognese anatomist's manual of dissection. It is after all quite easy
to understand that if dissections were common, there would be no
records of most of them, as they would be too commonplace for
chroniclers to mention. Only those that have some special feature are
by chance mentioned in some accounts of doings at the university. The
records of the actual number of dissections at most medical schools,
even a century ago, are not now available in most cases. On the other
hand, no one can read these quotations from Mondino's book without
realizing that the man who wrote these passages had made many {43}
dissections, and that it was a common practice for him to make
anatomical preparations in many different ways, under many different
circumstances and for many different purposes.
The second quotation shows, in fact, that Mondino had the custom
sometimes of boiling his bodies before dissecting them when he wished
to demonstrate special features, and he promises to make such an
anatomy for his students at another time. If the bull of Pope Boniface
VIII. was misinterpreted in any way to prohibit dissection, this would
surely be the practice supposed to fall under its provisions. Here we
find Mondino, less than twenty years after the promulgation of the
bull, writing about this very practice, however, and calmly suggesting
that he follows it as a routine, in a book that was published without
let or hindrance from the ecclesiastical authorities, and that became
for the next two centuries the most used book in the teaching of
anatomy in educational institutions that were directly under
ecclesiastical authorities. If the bull was misinterpreted so as to
forbid dissection, as has been said, surely this flagrant violation of
it would not have been permitted. It is clear that, if there was a
misinterpretation, it must have come later in the history of anatomy.
But of that we shall find no trace any more than at this time.
Here are the quotations from the Anatomy of Mondino which show that he
practiced not one but many methods of making dissections, according to
the purposes he had in view. The leaf and line references are to the
Dryander Edition, Marburg, 1541. (Taken from Prof. Pilcher.)
"I do not consider separately here the anatomy of component parts,
because their anatomy does not appear {44} clearly in the fresh
subject, but rather in those macerated in water." (Leaf 2, lines
8-13.)
".... these differences are more noticeable _in the cooked_ or
perfectly dried body, and so you need not be concerned about them,
as perhaps _I will make an anatomy upon such a one at another time_
and will write what I observe with my own senses, as I have proposed
from the beginning." (Leaf 60, lines 14-17.)
"What the members are to which these nerves come cannot well be seen
in such dissection as this, but it should be liquified with rain
water, and this is not contemplated in the present body." (Leaf 60,
lines 31-33.)
"After the veins you will note many muscles and many large and
strong cords, the complete anatomy of which you will not endeavor to
find in such a body, but in a body dried in the sun for three years,
as I have demonstrated at another time; I also declared completely
their number, and wrote the anatomy of the muscles of the arms,
hands and feet in a lecture which I gave over the first, second,
third and fourth subjects."
As must be clear to anyone, many of these expressions are, as
Professor Pilcher insists, intelligible only if we accept the
conclusion that their author had done many dissections, under many and
varying circumstances, during his career as an anatomist before
writing this volume. We have other evidence, of a much more direct
character, for this fact. Mondino uses the expression, that he had
demonstrated many times a certain anatomical feature which could only
be the subject of demonstration after dissection. The expression
occurs in a description of the hypo-gastric region which he calls the
sumen. Through this region, he says, there pass to the surface certain
veins which transmit fluid in the fetus {45} during the time of its
life in utero. For this reason they are better studied in the unborn
than in the fully developed, since they lose their function as soon as
complete development is reached. In this description Mondino uses the
words "ego hoc modo multitotiens monstravi."
As with regard to this, so as to another bit of evidence of Mondino's
frequency of dissection, Professor Pilcher has supplied the material.
He says in his article on the Mondino Myth, already cited:
"Shortly after his (Mondino's) death, the young Guy de Chauliac, of
Montpelier, came to Bologna to study anatomy under the tuition of
Mondino's successor, Bertrucius. When he wrote his own treatise, 'La
Grande Chirurgie,' thirty years later, he prefaced it with an
appreciation of the study of anatomy, saying: 'It is necessary and
useful to every physician to know first of all anatomy'; and that a
knowledge of anatomy was to be acquired by two means; 'these are,'
he says, 'the study of books, a means useful indeed, but not
sufficient to explain those things which can only be appreciated by
the senses; the other, experimentally on the dead body, according to
the treatise of Mondinus, of Bologna, which he has written, and
which (experimental anatomy on the cadaver) he (Mondinus) has done
many times'--'_et ipsam fecit multitoties._'"
Besides this evidence we have details of the lives of two of Mondino's
assistants which furnish further proofs of the frequency of dissection
at the University of Bologna during these first two decades of the
fourteenth century, which, it will be recalled, are also the first two
decades after the promulgation of Pope Boniface's bull. Curiously
enough, one of these assistants was a young woman who, as was not
infrequently the custom at this {46} time in the Italian universities,
was matriculated as a student at Bologna. She took up first philosophy
and afterwards anatomy under Mondino. While it is not generally
realized, co-education was quite common at the Italian universities of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and at no time since the
foundation of the universities has a century passed in Italy without
distinguished women occupying professors' chairs at some of the
Italian universities. This young woman, Alessandra Giliani, of
Persiceto, a country district not far from Bologna, took up the study
of anatomy with ardor and, strange as it may appear, became especially
enthusiastic about dissection. She became so skilful that she was made
the prosector of anatomy, that is, one who prepares bodies for
demonstration by the professor.
According to the Cronaca Persicetana, quoted by Medici in his History
of the Anatomical School of Bologna:
"She became most valuable to Mondino because she would cleanse most
skilfully the smallest vein, the arteries, all ramifications of the
vessels, without lacerating or dividing them, and to prepare them for
demonstration she would fill them with various colored liquids, which,
after having been driven into the vessels, would harden without
destroying the vessels. Again, she would paint these same vessels to
their minute branches so perfectly and color them so naturally that,
added to the wonderful explanations and teachings of the master, they
brought him great fame and credit." This whole passage shows a
wonderful anticipation of all our most modern methods--injection,
painting, hardening--of making anatomical preparations for class and
demonstration purposes.
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.
"An instructive and interesting side-light on the conditions
attending the study of practical anatomy in the days of Mondino may
be found in a record, still extant, of a legal procedure which
occurred in Bologna in the year 1319, four years after Mondino had
begun his public demonstrations and at a time when Otto and
Alessandra were doubtless enthusiastically working with him.
According to the record, four students, three from Milan and one
from Piacenza, were accused of having gone at night time to the
cemetery of the church of San Barnada, outside the San Felice gate,
and to have sacrilegiously violated the grave in which was buried
the body of a certain Pasino who had been hung on the gallows near
the Ponte di Reno. It was charged that the students had taken up the
body and carried it to the school of the parish of San Salvatore,
near the pharmacy of {49} Giacomo de Guido, where Master Alberto
(Zancari) was teaching. There were witnesses who affirmed that they
had seen the body of Pasino in the school and the students and
others intent upon dissecting it. It was the sixth of December when
the arrests were made, but the final outcome of the trial is not
stated."
Surely all this must be considered sufficient evidence to show that
Pope Boniface's bull neither forbade dissection, nor was
misinterpreted as prohibiting any practice in connection with
anatomical investigation. It is not enough for President White,
however, for after the publication of my original article in the
Medical Library and Historical Journal on The Popes and Anatomy, and
another article on Pope John XXII. and the Supposed Bull against
Chemistry, President White wrote thus in reply: "Dr. Walsh takes up
the decretal of Boniface VIII., in 1300, and endeavors to show that,
so far from forbidding dissection, it had quite a different tenor, and
that at sundry universities in Italy and at the University at
Montpelier, in France, dissection was permitted and most openly
practiced. This seems to me very disingenuous. The decretal of
Boniface was construed universally as prohibiting dissections for any
purpose whatever."
For President White, then, the publication of the text of the bull is
only an _endeavor_ to show that, so far from forbidding dissection, it
had quite a different tenor. This endeavor seems to him very
disingenuous(!) It matters not what evidence there may be for
dissection, or lack of evidence as to ecclesiastical opposition, the
decretal of Boniface was _construed universally_ as prohibiting any
dissections for any purpose whatever. All history must yield before
the reiteration of the assertion {50} that the Popes did forbid
dissection, and that there was no anatomy during the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, except such as by chance, in some
way or other, succeeded in evading the Church regulations. It simply
must have been so. President White has said it. For anyone to deny it
is to question his historical infallibility. Only those who are
disingenuous will dare to do so.
It is true, he grants there were some permits to dissect given, but
these were wrung from the unwilling hands of the ecclesiastical
authorities, and are only proofs of their opposition, not at all of
their toleration of dissection. There is no limit to which Professor
White will not go in order to maintain his proposition that the Popes
did forbid anatomy, and that there was no anatomical investigation
during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here, for
instance, is a paragraph from Professor White's answer which shows
very strikingly one method of arguing with regard to a question of
major significance in the history of education as well as of science,
and especially of medicine, during the Middle Ages. Comments on it are
entirely unnecessary:
"And now, as to Dr. Walsh's statement that dissection was permitted
by Popes and ecclesiastical authorities in universities. His
argument in the matter is an excellent example of Jesuitism. It is
true that under the pressure of the developing science of medicine,
sundry civil and ecclesiastical authorities did, from time to time,
issue permits allowing an occasional dissection, at rare intervals,
here and there; as, for example, the permission given to the
University of Lerida, in 1391, to dissect one dead criminal every
three years, and to sundry other universities to dissect one or two
human {51} bodies each year. It is a fact of which we have ample
testimony, that Mundinus, the great anatomist preceding Vesalius,
only dissected three human bodies with his classes during his entire
career. So far from effectually helping anatomy, these permissions
served really to fasten the idea upon the European mind that
dissection to any considerable extent by anatomical investigators
ought not to be allowed, and, as a matter of fact, it was not until
Vesalius, _in spite of theological opposition, braved calumny,
persecution, and possibly death, that this ecclesiastical barrier to
investigation was broken through._" (Italics ours.)
Since Professor White has insisted so much on the significance of
these permissions, a discussion of them will not be out of place.
There are records of a certain small number of permissions to dissect
having been granted by the Popes to various universities during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These are so few, however, that it
would seem that if they represented the only opportunities afforded
for dissection, then the development of anatomy must have been much
hampered.
With regard to this, it may be said that if the Popes gave permission
for dissection, then this practice was not forbidden by them. Here is
the proof of it out of the mouths of those who say the opposite. Why
should a permission be necessary, however, will be asked?
At the present moment such formal permissions are required quite as
much in all civilized countries as they were during the Middle Ages.
In certain parts of the United States a bond has to be filed by
applicants before permission to dissect will be given. Dissection is
recognized generally as a practice that needs definite regulation.
Without such regulation all sorts of abuses {52} would creep in.
During the Middle Ages popular feeling was all against dissection. It
was difficult, in many places, for the university authorities to
obtain permission for dissection from their immediate political
rulers. As a consequence of this they reverted to the theory, very
generally accepted at that time, that the university was independent
of the political authorities of the place in which it was situated, in
educational matters, and an appeal was made directly to the
ecclesiastical authorities for permission to dissect, as coming under
their jurisdiction in education. They had thus obtained many other
educational privileges that would not have been allowed them by
municipalities, and they were successful also in this. Anyone who
knows the details of the struggle of the universities to maintain the
rights of their students and faculties against the encroachments of
municipal and state authorities, will appreciate how much this
possibility of appeal to the Pope meant for the universities of that
time.
The permission to dissect was only another, but a very striking
example, of ecclesiastical authority granting privileges to
universities beyond those which they could have obtained from the
local governments under which they existed. Such permissions, far from
showing that the Popes were hampering or prohibiting dissection,
prove, on the contrary, that they were securing for educational
institutions what local popular prejudice would not have allowed them.
That this is the proper way to view this question will be best
appreciated by a review of the history of anatomy during the two
centuries and a half in which ecclesiastical authorities are said to
have prevented or discouraged its development. From this it will be
seen very clearly that the nearer to Rome the {53} medical schools
were, the more dissection was done in them; that dissection was most
common in Rome, at least during the latter part of this period; that
the golden age of anatomy developed most luxuriantly in Bologna when
that was a Papal city, and in Rome itself; and that in general the
Popes must be looked upon as having fostered and patronized the
medical sciences and anatomy in every possible way, while there is not
the slightest hint anywhere to be found of the ecclesiastical
opposition that is supposed to have dominated these centuries of
medical history.
In concluding this chapter it has seemed worth while to trace the
origin of the misinterpretation of Pope Boniface's decretal, which
makes it forbid dissection for anatomical purposes as well as the
cutting up and boiling of bodies in order to facilitate their removal
for long distances for burial. Prof. White quotes with great
confidence in the matter the Benedictine Literary History of France as
his authority, which he declares to be a Catholic authority. Under
ordinary circumstances, this would be quite sufficient to establish
the fact that such a misinterpretation must have taken place, for the
Benedictines were extremely careful in such matters and were not
likely to admit an assertion of this kind, unless they had good
foundation for it. The quotation on which Prof. White depends for his
declarations in the matter is found in the Sixteenth Volume of the
Histoire Litteraire de la France, which runs as follows:
"But what was to retard still more (than the prohibition of surgery
to the clergy mentioned in the preceding paragraph) was the very
ancient prejudice which opposed anatomical dissection as
sacrilegious. By a decree inserted in Le Sexte, Boniface VIII.
forbade the boiling {54} of bodies in order to obtain skeletons.
Anatomists were obliged to go back to Galen for information, and
could not study the human body directly, and consequently could not
advance the human science of bodily health and therapeutics."
Had this been written by the Benedictines, there would have been every
reason to think that though Boniface's decretal itself did not forbid
dissection it had unfortunately been so misinterpreted. While the
Histoire Litteraire de la France, however, was begun by the
Benedictine Congregation of St. Maur, their work, like many another
magnificent undertaking of the monks, was interrupted by the French
Revolution. What they had accomplished up to this time showed the
necessity for such work, and accordingly in the early part of the
nineteenth century a continuation of it was undertaken by the members
of the Institute of France. The Sixteenth Volume from which the
quotation just cited comes was mainly written by Pierre Claude
Francois Daunou, the French historian and politician. His life had not
been such as to make him a sympathetic student of the Middle Ages. He
had been a deputy to the Convention, 1792-1795, was elected the first
President of the Council of 500 in this latter year, and became a
member of the Tribunate in 1800. His contributions to history were
made near the close of his life. While he is usually considered an
authority in the political details of these centuries, it is easy to
understand that he was not favorably situated for familiarity with the
medical history of these times.
Once it is understood that the paragraph in question was written by M.
Daunou and not by the Benedictines, its adventitious prestige as a
Catholic historical {55} authority, to which we shall see presently it
has absolutely no right, vanishes. A word about M. Daunou will serve
to show how carefully any declaration of his with regard to the Popes
must be weighed. He belonged to that French school of Catholics who
try to minimize in every way the influence of the Papacy in the
Church, and who, as students of history know very well, do not
hesitate even to twist historical events to suit their prejudices and
give them a significance detrimental to the Popes. This was the
principal purpose of Daunou's historical writing. There is a little
volume called Outlines of a History of the Court of Rome and of the
Temporal Power of the Popes, declared by the translator to be by
Daunou, which was published in Philadelphia in 1837. The American
edition was issued as a Protestant tract, and the translator states
frankly that M. Daunou's purpose in composing it was to prove that
"the temporal power of the Roman Pontiffs originated in fraud and
usurpation; that its influence upon their pastoral ministry has been
to mar and degrade it, and its continuation is dangerous to the peace
and the liberties of Europe; and that its constant influence to these
effects is to retard the advancement of civilization and knowledge."
M. Daunou's title for the work as issued originally in French was An
Historical Essay on the Temporal Power of the Popes and on the Abuses
which they have made of their Spiritual Ministry. [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 3: The time at which this little book was published
furnishes the best possible commentary on its purpose. It was
originally issued in 1810, the year after Pope Pius VII. had been
carried off from Rome, and when Napoleon was using every effort to
discredit the Pope and bring about a state of affairs in which the
pontiff would be compelled to accept a Concordat that would deprive
the Church of many of her former rights. It was then really a
political pamphlet meant to curry favor with Napoleon, and issued
anonymously, because even Daunou did not care to put his name to it
under the circumstances. This will give a better idea of how much
credence may be given to Daunou's assertions with regard to the Popes
of the Middle Ages, than any reflections that we could make.]
Everything that M. Daunou has to say with regard to the Popes is
tinged by his political and Gallican {56} prejudices. This is why he
states so definitely in the Histoire Litteraire de la France that the
bull of Pope Boniface VIII., if it did not actually forbid dissection,
at least was responsible for hampering the practice for two centuries.
That M. Daunou's expressions on this subject have been taken so
seriously, however, is to me at least a never-ending source of
surprise. He himself must have known nothing at all of the history of
dissection, while those who accepted his opinion must have carefully
avoided consulting authorities on the history of anatomy, for it is
actually just after this bull that the history of public dissection
begins. It is clear to me, then, that this absurd assertion of M.
Daunou never would have been swallowed so readily only that writers
were over-anxious to find material to use against the Popes and the
Church.
Daunou found this bull of Boniface an excellent opportunity to
discredit the Popes in their relations to science. It is true, the
bull itself says nothing about dissection, nor is there anything in it
that would tend to create even a distant impression that it was
directed against anatomical preparations of any kind. We might expect,
then, that his assertion in this matter would have been contradicted
at once by some one who would read the bull. The bull is, however, not
easy to find for consultation purposes. It does not occur, as we have
said, in Le Sexte itself, that is, in the ordinary Sixth Book of Papal
Decretals, published by Boniface VIII., though Daunou quotes it as
from there and without a {57} hint as to where it may be really found.
It is in an appendix to this work, added after Boniface's death. It
would be rather difficult, then, and would require some special
knowledge and no little patience on the part of a subsequent collator
of historical sources to find the bull, unless he were determined on
getting at the bottom of this whole question. As a consequence
Daunou's assertion has remained practically unchallenged for the
better part of a century, though many scholars who were familiar with
Boniface's sixth book have doubtless realized its falsity, but owing
to the fact that they would not ordinarily come across the bull in
their direct reading of Boniface's famous volume, would not be in a
position to contradict its misquotation. If looked at in this way,
Daunou's passage in the Histoire Litteraire would seem to be a
deliberate and very clever and, unfortunately, successful perversion
of history.
Daunou, who was a deep student of Papal affairs and whose knowledge of
the history of the Papacy would not be likely to have missed so
important a detail, might very well have known, that about a half a
century before the time when he wrote asserting that this bull of
Boniface VIII. had prevented dissection, someone who had a doubt on
the subject asked the ecclesiastical authorities at Rome, whether this
Papal document was to be considered as referring in any way to the
practice of dissection, or the cutting up of human bodies for
anatomical purposes. In reply to this question Pope Benedict XIV. made
a very direct answer, absolutely in the negative. This is the only
hint that I know of in serious history that Pope Boniface's bull was
ever considered to have any reference to dissection for anatomical
purposes. At the time when Pope Benedict XIV.'s answer {58} was
published the Papal Medical School had been in existence for some five
centuries and a half. For about two centuries and a half it had been
distinguished in the annals of medicine, and as we shall see in the
chapter on The Papal Medical School, some of the most distinguished
anatomists of their time had been investigating and teaching by means
of dissections, and their demonstrations had been attended by many of
the high ecclesiastics, even many autopsies had been made on
Cardinals.
Pope Benedict's reply is quoted in full in Puschmann's Handbuch der
Geschichte der Medizin. Vol. II., page 227, in Robert Ritter Von
Toeply's article on the History of Anatomy. It occurs in the midst of
an abundance of material of great historical importance which shows
the place that the Popes occupy as patrons of anatomy for several
centuries. Von Toeply has no illusions with regard to any supposed
opposition of the Popes to medical science. He even says, that while
the older writers have always told the story of the development of
anatomy as if the Popes tried to prevent the study of it, as a matter
of fact, there is scarcely any evidence for this, and copious evidence
for their having done much to foster this branch of medical science
which they consider so important for the healing of the ills of
mankind. His reference to Boniface's answer with regard to the
relation of Boniface's bull to dissection runs as follows:
"Under the heading, Concerning the Dissection of Bodies in Public
Institutions of Learning, and in reply to the question whether the
bull of Boniface VIII. forbids the dissection of human bodies,
Benedict XIV. said (Institute 64):
"By the singular beneficence of God the study of medicine flourished
in a very wonderful manner in this {59} city (Rome). Its professors
are known for their supreme talents to the remotest parts of the
earth. There is no doubt that they have greatly benefited by the
diligent labor which they have devoted to dissection. From this
practice beyond doubt they have gained a profound knowledge of their
art and a proficiency that has enabled them to give advice for the
benefit of the ailing as well as a skill in the curing of disease.
Now such dissection of bodies is in no way contrary to the bull of
Pope Boniface. He indeed imposed the penalty of excommunication, to
be remitted only by the Sovereign Pontiff himself, upon all those
who would dare to disembowel the body of any dead person and either
dismember it or horribly cut it up, separating the flesh from the
bones. From the rest of his bull, however, it is clear that this
penalty was only to be inflicted upon those who took bodies already
buried out of their graves and by an act horrible in itself, cut
them in pieces in order that they might carry them elsewhere and
place them in another tomb. It is very clear, however, that by this,
the dissection of bodies, which has proved so necessary for those
exercising the profession of medicine, is by no means forbidden."
[Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: The original Latin taken from Puschmann runs thus: "De
cadaverum sectione facienda in publicis Academiis, utrum constitutio
Bonifacii VIII. sectioni humanorum cadaverum adversetur. Singulari
dei beneficio medicinae studium in hac civitate (Roma) magnopere
floret cujus etiam professores ob eximiam virtutem in remotissimis
terrae partibus commendantur. Ipsis sane maxime profuit, quod
incidendis mortuis corporibus diligentem operam contulerint, ex qua
procul dubio praeclaram artis scientiam, in consultationibus obeundis
pro aegrotorum salute praestantiam, morbisque eurandis peritiam
consecuti sunt . . . . Porro haec membrorum incisio nullo modo adversatur
Bonifacii Institutioni . . . . Ille quidem poenam excommunicationis
indicit Pontifici solo remittendam, iis omnibus qui audeant
cuiuscumque defuncti corpus exenterare, ac illud membratim vel in
frustra immaniter concidere ab ossibus tegumentum carnis excutere.
Tamen ex reliquis ejusdem constitutionis partibus clare
deprehenditur, hanc poenam illis infligi qui sepulta corpora e tumulis
eruentes ipsa nefario scelere in frustra secabant ut alio deferrent,
alioque sepulchro collocarent. Quamobrem membrorum incisio
minime interdicitur, quae adeo necessaria est medicinae facultatem
exercentibus."]
This whole subject of the Supposed Papal Prohibition of Anatomy is
typical of a certain form of controversial writing against the Church.
A document of some time or other from the Middle Ages is taken,
twisted from its {60} original meaning and set up as a serious
stumbling block to the development of science or education in some
way. It is quoted confidently by some one without much authority.
Others who are glad of the opportunity to have such an objection to
urge against the Papacy, take it up eagerly, do not look it up in the
original, absolutely fail to consider the circumstances in which it
was issued, and then spread it broadcast. Of course it is accepted by
unthinking readers, whose prejudices lead them to believe that this is
what was to be expected anyhow. It maybe that history, as is the case
in anatomy, absolutely contradicts the assertion. That makes no
difference. History is ignored and treatises are written showing how
much science would have developed only for Papal opposition, by people
who know nothing at all about the real story of the development of
science. The real history of anatomy, showing very clearly how much
was done for the science by the Popes and ecclesiastics, will be told
in the following chapters.
{61}
THE STORY OF ANATOMY DOWN TO THE RENAISSANCE.
We have seen that the supposed prohibition of anatomy by the Popes has
no existence in reality. In spite of this fact, which it was easy for
anyone to ascertain who wished to consult the documents asserted to
forbid, a number of historical writers have insisted on finding
religious or ecclesiastical, or theological, opposition to anatomical
studies. Professor White has been most emphatic in his assertions in
this regard. He admits that the supposed bull of prohibition had quite
a different purport, yet he still continued to assert its connection
with the failure of anatomy to develop during the Middle Ages. This
presumed failure of anatomy during the Middle Ages is a myth. It
continues to secure credence only in the minds of those who know
nothing of the history of medical science during the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries and who have not consulted the
serious histories of medicine that treat of this time, but flourishes
vigorously in the minds of those who have a definite purpose in making
out a story of theological or Church opposition to science in general.
To counteract the false impression that has gained such wide
acceptance in this matter, it has seemed advisable, in order to settle
the question definitely once and for all, to trace the history of
anatomical science from its beginning in the Middle Ages down to
modern {62} times. It will not be hard to show that there was a
constant development and an unfailing interest in this subject. This
can be understood even more clearly from the story of the development
of surgery in the Middle Ages and its relations to anatomy than from
the history of anatomy itself. As is well known, materials with regard
to practical and applied science interest men more at all times, and
documents with regard to them are more likely to be preserved, and so
the history of surgery is very full, while the history of anatomy may
prove not quite so satisfactory. It is true of all sciences, that
there are periods when they have much less attraction than at other
times, and the success of investigators and original workers is not
always the same. As in nearly everything else, the real advances in
all science come when genius makes its mark, and not merely because a
large number of men happen to be interested in the subject. This will
be found as true in anatomy as in other sciences, and so there are
periods when not much is doing, but nowhere is there a trace of
ecclesiastical opposition to account for these variations of interest.
There is no doubt at all that there was much popular opposition to the
practice of dissection in the Middle Ages; that has existed at all
times in the world's history. It was very pronounced among the old
Pagans in Rome as well as in Greece, and it prevented anatomical study
to a very great degree. It continued to exist in modern times until
almost the present generation. Indeed, it has not yet entirely
disappeared, as any physician who has tried to secure autopsies on
interesting cases knows very well. The New York Academy of Medicine is
only a little over a half century old, and yet nearly every one of its
early presidents had thrilling {63} experiences in body-snatching as a
young man, because no proper provision for the supplying of anatomical
material had as yet been made by law, and bodies had to be obtained.
The feeling of objection to having the bodies of friends anatomized is
natural and not due to religion. It exists quite as strongly among the
ignorant who have no religion as among the religiously inclined. It
has not disappeared among the educated classes of our own time,
religious or irreligious. If this is borne in mind, the history of the
development of anatomy will be easier to understand.
The first definite evidence in modern history for the existence of the
practice of dissection is a famous law of the German Emperor,
Frederick II., from the first half of the thirteenth century. This law
was promulgated for the two Sicilies, that is, for Southern Italy and
Sicily proper, very probably in the year 1240. It has often been
vaguely referred to, but its actual significance can only be
understood from the terms of the law itself, which has been literally
translated by Von Toeply in his Studien Zur Geschichte der Anatomie in
Im Mittelalter. [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: Deuticke Leipzig und Wien, 1893]
The paragraph with regard to dissection runs
as follows:
"As an enactment that will surely prove beneficial to health, we
decree that no surgeon will be allowed to practice, in case he has
not a written testimonial, which he must present to the teachers in
the medical faculty, that he has for at least a year applied himself
to that department of medicine which is concerned with the teaching
and practice of surgery, and that he has, above all, learned the
anatomy of the human body in this manner, and that he is fully
competent in this department {64} of medicine, without which neither
surgery can be undertaken with success nor sufferers cured."
[Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: The complete text of this law, which is a marvelous
anticipation of all our efforts for the regulation of the practice of
medicine down even to the present day, will be found in the appendix.]
Such a regulation, as pointed out by Professor Pilcher in an article
on the early history of dissection, [Footnote 7] and as we know by
modern experience, does not come into force as a rule before the
actual practice of what is prescribed, has been for some time the
custom and its usefulness proved by the results attained. It seems
very probable, then, that even at this early day the Emperor Frederick
was only making into a law what had been at least a custom before this
time. Lest anyone should think that this is a far-fetched assumption,
certain other paragraphs of this law, which show very definitely the
high degree to which the development of medical teaching had reached,
must be recalled. Frederick declared that medicine could only be
learned if there was a proper groundwork of logic. Only after three
years devoted to logic, then, under which term is included the grammar
and philosophy of an ordinary undergraduate course, could a man take
up the study of medicine. After three years devoted to medicine, to
which it is again specifically declared another year must be added if
surgery were to be practiced, a man might be given his degree in
medicine, but must spend a subsequent full year in the practical study
of medicine under the supervision of an experienced physician.
[Footnote 7: The Mondino Myth, Medical Library and Historical Journal,
1906]
The law further decreed definite punishments for the practice of
medicine without due warrant and violation of its regulations, and
also regulated the practice of apothecaries. It is rather interesting
to find that these {65} were forbidden to share their profits with
physicians, and the physicians themselves were not allowed to
distribute their own medicines. In a word, practically every one of
the problems in the practice of medicine which medical societies are
trying to solve at the present moment, were also occupying the
attention of the civil authorities about seven centuries ago. Anyone
who reads this law will not be loath to believe that it represents the
culmination of a series of efforts to regulate medical practice, and
especially medical education, and that it was not merely a chance
legal utterance that happened to touch a single important question for
the first time. One of the paragraphs of the law even contains some
clauses that would prevent fake medical schools and that establishes a
board of medical examiners. This consisted of certain state officials
and some professors of the art of medicine. In a word, medical
education had reached a high grade of development, and medical
practice was legally established on a high plane of professional
dignity.
Salerno had already enjoyed a high reputation as a medical school for
more than two centuries when Frederick's law was promulgated. It is
true that we have no definite records of dissections done in the
school. If these were not an uncommon occurrence, however, but came as
did dissections later on, quite as a matter of course, the absence of
such records, when we recall how liable to destruction were the meagre
accounts of the university transactions of the time during the long
period that has intervened and because of the many vicissitudes they
were liable to, is not surprising. During the century following this
decree there seems to be no doubt that dissections were done
regularly, though {66} perhaps not very frequently from our modern
standpoint, at Salerno. Salerno, as we shall see in the chapter on The
Papal Medical School, was always closely in touch with the
ecclesiastical authorities, and especially with the Papacy. There was
no hint of friction of any kind, either before or after this law of
Frederick's. The question of ecclesiastical interference with
dissection does not seem to have arisen at all, much less to have
proved an obstacle to the development of medical science.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century the center of interest in
anatomy and the matter of dissections shifts to Bologna. We have
already discussed the question whether Mondino was the first to do
public anatomies, and as to whether he performed only the few that by
a narrow misunderstanding of certain of his own words have sometimes
been ascribed to him. Professor Pilcher, in the article The Mondino
Myth, already cited, is of the opinion, and gives excellent reasons
for it, that Taddeo, the great Bolognese physician of the thirteenth
century, who was Mondino's master, had done at least some dissections
in Bologna. Personally I have long felt sure that Taddeo or Thaddeus,
as he is sometimes called in the Latin form of his name, did not a
few, but a number of dissections.
Professor Pilcher's account of him does not exaggerate his merits. I
may say that he was one of the great Papal physicians of whom we shall
have more to tell hereafter.
"Any comprehensive attempt to trace the real influences to which was
due so great a step as a return to the practice of dissections of
the human body, seems to me must be very defective if it failed to
take into consideration the influence of such a man as Thaddeus
(Italian Taddeo).{67} That he was able to impress himself in the way
in which history records that he did, both upon the general public
and upon the scholastic foundations of Bologna, shows a strength of
character and a mastery of the peculiar conditions of the moment in
the fields of science and philosophy which made him a master and an
inspirer. If he is to be considered in his proper historical light,
as one who declares that the knowledge of the structure of the human
body to a most minute degree is the foundation upon which all
rational medicine and surgery must be built, then it is impossible
to exaggerate the importance of the pivotal moment when, in the
development of science, the human body began to be anatomized. Nor
is any fault to be found with the custom which has crowned with the
laurels of universal appreciation the names of those men who began
and who continued anatomical study, who vulgarized the practice of
dissection.
"In my own investigations and reflections upon the conditions which
led up to this happy renewal of scientific search into the
composition of the body of man, it has seemed to me that writers
have hitherto fallen short of tracing through to its ultimate
source, the earlier spirit of enthusiasm for knowledge, of insight
into the problems of disease, and of contempt for traditionary
shackles, to the influence of which, as shown by the master, Taddeo,
the latter work of the pupil, Mondino, was in great measure due."
Medici, in his History of the School of Anatomy at Bologna, [Footnote
8] quotes Sarti on The Distinguished Professors of the University of
Bologna for proof of Taddeo's familiarity with dissection. Von Toeply
does not think that {68} this quotation is enough absolutely to prove
that Taddeo had done dissections, yet it would be hard to understand
it unless some such interpretation is made. Taddeo was asked to decide
a medico-legal question with regard to a pregnant woman. He refused,
however, with a modesty that might well be commended to medico-legal
experts of more modern times, to answer the question decisively,
because he had never made a dissection of a pregnant woman. Sarti
argues that it is evident from this that he had dissected other bodies
more easy to obtain than those of pregnant women, or else that he had
had the opportunity to make observations on them when dissected by
others.
[Footnote 8: Medici Compendio Storico Della Scuola Anatomica de
Bologna, Bologna, 1857. ]
Certain of Taddeo's contemporaries must have had the incentive of his
example to help them to a knowledge of human anatomy, for they surely
could not have accomplished all that they did in surgery without
experience in dissection, yet Taddeo was looked up to as a master by
all of them.
Anyone who has read the contributions to surgery of William of Salicet
and his great pupil Lanfranc, even if only what we give with regard to
them in our chapter on Surgery during the Middle Ages, cannot but be
impressed with the idea that they must have done human dissections.
They do not mention this fact explicitly, but portions of their
surgical works are taken up with the consideration of applied anatomy.
They discuss the relations of various structures to one another,
especially with reference to the surgery of them. Von Toeply, in his
Studies on the History of Anatomy in the Middle Ages, says that the
anatomies written before William's chapters on applied anatomy, were
most of them purely theoretic discussions meant to be guides for
internal {69} medicine, or else they were very short directions for
those who undertook the practical work of the dismemberment of bodies,
usually, however, with reference to animals rather than to human
bodies. In William of Salicet we encounter, he says, for the first
time a treatise on anatomy made with the deliberate purpose of its
application to practical surgery. Everywhere William gives hints for
surgical operations with special reference to the anatomical
relations.
Puccinotti quotes from William of Salicet's surgery, written about
1270, a passage that shows how familiar this surgeon must have been
with dissection. The nephew of Count Pallavicini received an arrow
wound in the jugular vein and died within an hour. During his death
agony he suffered from a peculiar form of rattle in his throat. It was
thought that this might be due to the fact that the arrow had been
poisoned. William was called in to decide this question, and found
that there was nothing responsible for his death except the wound
itself. He describes how he found the blood in the lungs and in the
heart, and considers that the conditions that were present were due to
the wound. Von Toeply has suggested that William would have given more
details had he actually examined these organs, but when the autopsy
report is negative, such descriptive details are not usual even at the
present time. If he had found reason for thinking that there was
poison in the case, a careful description of the other organs would be
necessary. The fact, however, that he was asked to decide such a
question, would seem to indicate that he was supposed to have a
knowledge of the normal appearances of human tissues when examined by
dissection.
In everything else Lanfranc went farther than his {70} master William,
and he did so also in anatomy. Some of the details of his work will be
found in our chapter on Surgery in the Middle Ages. He could not have
been able to give the detailed instructions that he has for the
treatment of every portion of the body only that he knew them by
actual contact in the cadaver as well as the patient. His outlook upon
scientific medicine and surgery would satisfy even the most exacting
of modern experimental scientists. The famous aphorism of his runs as
follows: "Every science which depends on operation is greatly
strengthened by experience." More than anything else, however, surgery
owes to Lanfranc the distinct advantage that he carried into the West
as far as Paris, the methods which had come into existence in Italy,
and were ever after to prove a precious heritage in the great French
University. As Salicet's work was carried on by Lanfranc, at least as
well was Lanfranc's work further advanced by his pupil and successor
in the chair of surgery, Henri de Mondeville. This subject of surgical
development will be treated in the chapter on Surgery in the Middle
Ages. Here it is introduced only to emphasize the opportunity there
must have been for anatomical study through dissection in the
thirteenth century, or these men would not have made the marvelous
progress they actually accomplished in this department.
With regard to Mondino, Taddeo's successor at Bologna, enough has been
said already in the preceding chapter. About this time, however, very
definite evidence begins to accumulate of the frequent practice of
dissection. Roth, whose life of Vesalius is a standard work in the
history of anatomy, has summed up most of what we know with regard to
dissections in the early {71} part of the fourteenth century, in his
chapter on Dissection Before Vesalius's Time. Roth's work is well
known and is frequently referred to in Dr. White's History of the
Warfare of Science with Theology. There can be no question, then, but
that in taking what Roth has to say I shall be quoting from a work
with regard to which there can be no hint even of partiality. Roth
himself was a Swiss, with no leaning toward the Church. There are
certain portions of his book, indeed, in which he is inclined not to
allow that the Church did as much for education in these times as she
actually did. His study of the rise of anatomy can be accepted with
absolute assurance, that it is at least not written from the
standpoint of one who wants to make the situation with regard to
anatomy more favorable than it actually was during the fourteenth
century, for the sake of showing any lack of opposition on the part of
ecclesiastics.
Some of the material that Roth has made use of has already been
referred to in the preceding chapter, but it has seemed proper to
repeat it here because this gives a connected account from a definite
authority in the history of medicine, and especially of anatomy, with
regard to the century immediately following the promulgation of
Boniface's bull. Besides, it gives an opportunity for such comments on
various features of the history of anatomy, as he details it, as will
bring out the significance of his remarks. His account will make it
very clear that, far from the Papal bull in question having been
universally construed as prohibiting dissections, as Dr. White says it
was, it never entered into the minds of medieval anatomists to
consider it as having any such signification. The bull was never
thought of in that sense at all. It does not refer to anatomy or
dissection and it never had {72} any place in the history of anatomy
until dragged into it without warrant by Daunou and other nineteenth
century writers. Roth says:
"In the pre-Vesalian period the dissection of the human body was
practiced, according to the terms of Frederick's law, for the
instruction of those about to become physicians and surgeons. The
natural place for this school anatomy--for a dissection was called
anatomia, or, erroneously, anatomia publica--was at the universities
and the medical schools. Apart from teaching institutions, however,
public anatomies were held in Strasburg and in Venice. Their purpose
was the instruction of the practicing medical personnel of these
towns. Dissections which were not made for general instruction were
called private anatomies. They were performed for the benefit of a
few physicians, or students, or magistrates, or artists. Private
anatomies began to have special importance only toward the end of
the pre-Vesalian period (this would be about the end of the
fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth century). It is a
play of chance that the first historical reference to a dissection
concerns a private anatomy, one undertaken for the purpose of making
a legal autopsy. This was made in Bologna in the year 1302 (two
years after the decretal supposed to forbid dissection). A certain
Azzelino died with unexpected suddenness, after his physicians had
visited him once. A magistrate suspected poison and commissioned two
physicians and three surgeons to determine the cause of death. It
was found that death resulted from natural causes. (As I have said,
it would appear that this was not an unusual procedure, for unless
medical autopsies had been done before, it does not seem probable
that this method of {73} determining the cause of death would have
been so readily taken up.)
"Thirteen years later there is an account of the dissection of two
female bodies, in January and March of the year 1315, performed by
Mundinus." (We have already seen that the fact that the two female
bodies should be especially mentioned, though taken by some
historians of medicine to indicate that Mundinus had done but few
dissections, will not stand such an interpretation, in the light of
the evidence that he had dissected many male bodies at least, as his
text-book of anatomy indeed makes very clear. These two dissections
of females happened only to have special features that made them
noteworthy.) "A few years later (1319) there is a remarkable
document which tells the story of body-snatching for dissecting
purposes." (This would seem to be sufficient of itself to show that
a number of dissections were being done, and, indeed, as I have
already said, Rashdall, in his History of the Universities, states
that, according to the University statutes teachers were bound to
dissect such bodies as students brought to them.) Roth concludes
with the words (italics are mine): "_These are a few, but weighty
testimonies for the zeal with which Bologna pursued anatomy in the
fourteenth century._" (I may add that all of these concern the
twenty years immediately following Pope Boniface's supposed
prohibition.)
Nor was the custom of making dissections any less active during the
rest of the half century after the time when, if we are to believe
Professor White, the decree of Boniface had been universally
interpreted to forbid it. In a note to his history of dissection
during this period in Bologna, Roth says: "Without doubt the passage
in {74} Guy de Chauliac which tells of having very often (multitoties,
many times, is the exact word) seen dissections must be considered as
referring to Bologna." This passage runs as follows: "My master,
Bertruccius, conducted the dissection very often after the following
manner: The dead body having been placed upon a bench, he used to make
four lessons on it. First, the nutritional portions were treated,
because they are so likely to become putrified. In the second, he
demonstrated the spiritual members; in the third, the animate members;
in the fourth, the extremities." (Guy de Chauliac was at Bologna
studying under Bertruccius just before the middle of the fourteenth
century. It is evident beyond all doubt, from what he says, that
dissections were quite common. This is during the first fifty years
after the decree. I shall show a little later that there are records
of dissections during the second half of this century. Roth, however,
goes on to tell next of the fifteenth century.)
Roth says nothing about the decree of Boniface VIII., nor of any
possible effect that it had upon anatomy. The real historian, of
course, does not mention things that have not happened. Roth
confesses, as I have said, that he takes the material for his sketch
of anatomy before Vesalius's time from Corradi. [Footnote 9] Corradi
being an Italian, and knowing of the slander with regard to the Papal
decree, explicitly denies it. Surely, here is material enough to
convince anyone that all that Professor White has said with regard to
the supposed effect of the misinterpretation of Boniface's decree is
without foundation in the history of anatomy. Within twenty years {75}
after the bull was issued dissection was practiced to such an extent,
that body-snatching became so common that there were prosecutions for
it, and public dissections seem to have been held every year in the
universities of Italy during most of the fourteenth century.
[Footnote 9: Corradi Dello Studio e dell' Insegnamento dell' Anatomia
in Italia nel Medio Evo ed in parte del Cinquecento, Padova, 1873.]
De Renzi [Footnote 10] gives an interesting account of the methods by
which material was obtained for dissection purposes before governments
made any special provision for this purpose. Naturally, the rifling of
graves was resorted to by students intensely interested in the subject
of anatomy. The first criminal prosecution for body-snatching on
record is in 1319, when some students brought a body to one Master
Albert, a lecturer in medicine at the University at Bologna, and he
dissected it for them. At this time, according to the statutes of the
university, teachers of anatomy were bound to make a dissection if the
students supplied the body. The whole party were brought to trial for
this offence, though they do not seem to have suffered any severe
penalty for their violation of the laws. At this time, according to De
Renzi, there was a rage for dissection and many bodies were yearly
obtained surreptitiously for the purpose.
[Footnote 10: De Renzi Storia della Medicina in Italia, Napoli.
1845-49, Vol. II., p. 247.]
With regard to the bodies of condemned criminals, people began to
countenance the procedure, and while unwilling as yet to give them
freely, allowed the bodies to be taken. Corradi, quoted by Puschmann,
says "that laws against the desecration of graves, without being
abolished, became a dead letter. The authorities interfered only if
decided violence had been used or a great scandal raised. Such
consequences were likely to follow only if, in the ardor of their
enthusiasm for anatomical knowledge, students rifled the graves of
well-known {76} persons or took the bodies of those whose relatives
discovered the desecration and proceeded against the marauders by
legal measures."
At the Italian universities after the middle of the fourteenth century
there is abundant evidence for perfect freedom with regard to
dissection. We have already shown by our quotation from Roth that
Bertrucci was very active in dissection work and did many public
dissections. He was followed by Pietro di Argelata, who died toward
the end of the fourteenth century. These men followed Mondino in the
chair of anatomy at Bologna, and Julius Pagel, in his chapter on
Anatomy and Physiology in Puschmann's Handbuch der Geschichte der
Medizin (Vol. I., p. 707), says that "the successors of Mondino were
in a position, owing to the gradual enlightenment of the spirit of the
time and the general realization of the importance of anatomy as well
as the fostering liberality of the authorities, _to make regular,
systematic dissections of the human body._" This would bring us down,
then, to the end of the fourteenth century.
To return now to Roth, who takes up the next century. He says:
"For the fifteenth century, the university statutes of Bologna for
the year 1405 furnish many sources of information. There is a
special division which is concerned with the _annual anatomy or
dissection_ that had to be made and the selection of the persons to
be present, the payment of the expenses and other details. An
addition to the statutes, made in the year 1442, determines the
arrangement of the delivery of the body from the city to the
university authorities. Every year two bodies, one male and one
female, must be provided for the {77} medical school dissections. In
default of a female body, a second male body was to be provided. In
the presence of such detailed regulations, the absence almost
entirely of details as to the actual performance of dissections can
mean very little. Bologna reached its highest development as a
medical school at the beginning of the sixteenth century when
Alexander Achillinus and Jacob Berengarius had charge of the public
dissections there. Of these I shall speak later." (All this is at
the University of Bologna, where ecclesiastical influence was
supreme and where the Popes exercised their jurisdiction as the
ultimate authority to be appealed to in all disputed educational
questions.)
Roth continues: "Padua had, like Bologna, dissection in the
fourteenth century. There is the record of a dissection made in the
year 1341, in which Gentilis made the discovery of a gall-stone."
(It is evidently not because the dissection was unusual, but because
the discovery was unusual, that this incident is mentioned. The
dissections were such ordinary occurrences as not to deserve special
mention except for some particular reason.)
"Much more is known about dissection at Padua in the fifteenth
century, when the city had become Venetian." [Footnote 11] (It is
significant to note that the previous occurrence was in pre-Venetian
days, for Professor White insists that it was the Venetian
authorities, in opposition to the Pope, who allowed dissection at
Padua. Here is the rebuttal of any such theory.) "Bertapaglia, in
his Surgery, has the record of the dissection of a criminal made
under the direction of Master Hugo De Senis, on {78} the 8th of
February, 1429. On the 4th of April, 1430, the dissection of a woman
was made. In 1444 Professor Montagnana speaks of fourteen
dissections at which he had been present." (This would seem to
indicate that dissections were quite common and that the occasional
records of them give no proper idea of their actual number.)
[Footnote 11: Note that this is a full century before Vesalius's time,
who, Professor White insists, reintroduced dissection.]
I would not wish to produce the impression, however, that Italy was
the only place in Europe in which dissections were freely done during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There is no doubt that anatomy
and surgery and every branch of medicine was cultivated much more
assiduously and with much better opportunities provided for students
down in Italy, than anywhere else in the world. This of itself alone
shows the utter absurdity of the declarations that the Church was
opposed to medical progress in any way, since the nearer the center of
Christendom, the more ardor there was for investigation and the more
liberty to pursue original researches. Other countries also began to
wake up to the spirit of progress in medical education that was
abroad. In France there were two centers of interest in anatomy. One
of these was at Montpelier, the other at Paris. It is interesting to
note, however, that the men to whom anatomical progress is due at
these universities obtained their training, or at least had taken
advantage of the special opportunities provided for anatomical
investigation to be had, in the Italian cities. Guy de Chauliac I have
already mentioned. He is spoken of as the Father of Modern Surgery,
and there is no doubt that he did much to set surgery on a very
practical basis and to make anatomy a fundamental feature of the
training for it. He declared that it was absurd to think that surgeons
could do good work unless they knew their anatomy.
{79}
Under his fostering care the study of anatomy flourished to a
remarkable degree at the University of Montpelier. The difficulty
hitherto had been that it was very hard to procure bodies for
dissecting purposes. It is easy to understand that friends of the dead
would always prevent dissections as far as they could. They do so even
at the present moment, and there are not many of us who find it in our
hearts to blame them over much for it. Few of us are ready to make the
sacrifice of our own dead. Even the poor in those days had friends who
prevented the cutting up of their remains; for large alms-houses were
not presided over by paid officials, but by religious, to whom their
poor in their friendlessness appealed as kindred. There were not many
prisons, and they were not needed because all felonies were punished
by death. Guy de Chauliac realized that here was the best opportunity
to procure bodies. Accordingly it was mainly through his
instrumentality that a regulation was made handing over the dead
bodies of malefactors to the medical school for dissecting purposes.
It must be recalled that when he did this the Papal court was at
Avignon, in the South of France, and exerted great influence over the
University of Montpelier, situate not far away.
The reputation of the University of Paris is such that we should not
expect her to be backward in this important department of education.
As a matter of fact, there is abundant evidence of dissection having
been carried on here at the end of the thirteenth century, and the
practice was not interrupted at the beginning of the fourteenth
century. Lanfranc, the famous surgeon who had studied with William of
Salicet in Italy (we have already mentioned both of them and we shall
have much {80} to say of them hereafter), taught surgery from a very
practical standpoint in Paris, and illustrated his teachings by means
of dissections. Lanfranc was succeeded in Paris by Mondeville, whose
name is also associated with the practice of dissection by most
historians of medicine, and whose teaching was of such a practical
character that there can be no doubt that he must have employed this
valuable adjunct in his surgical training of students. In general,
however, the records of dissecting work and of anatomical development
are not near so satisfactory at Paris as in the Italian universities.
As is the case in our own day and has always been true, universities
were inclined to specialties in the Middle Ages, and the specialty of
Paris was Philosophy and Theology. This was choice, however, not
compulsion, any more than similar conditions in our own time. The
medical school continued to be in spite of this one of the best in the
world, though it was not famous for its original work, except in
surgery, which is, however, the subject most nearly related to anatomy
and the one whose development would seem necessarily to demand
attention to anatomy.
With the Renaissance, which is usually said to begin after the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, and the consequent dispersion of Greek
scholars throughout Italy, a new spirit entered into anatomy as into
every other department of intellectual life at this time. The reason
for it is not easy to explain. Perhaps the spread of Greek texts with
regard to medicine inspired students and teachers to try out their
problems for themselves, and so a new impetus was given to anatomical
investigation. Whatever it was that caused it, the new movement came
unhampered by the Church, and Italy {81} continued to be even to a
greater degree than before the Mecca for medical students who wished
to do original work in anatomy. During the last fifty years of the
fifteenth century anatomy began its modern phase, and original work of
a very high order was accomplished. There are five names that deserve
to be mentioned in this period. They are Gabriele Zerbi, Achillini,
Berengar of Carpi, Matthew of Gradi and Benivieni. Each of these men
did work that was epoch-making in anatomy, and each has a place in the
history of the science that will never be lost.
Zerbi, who did his work at Verona, traced the olfactory nerves and
describes the nerve supply of the special senses more completely than
it had ever been done before. After his time it was only a question of
filling in the details of this subject. Achillini added much to our
knowledge of the anatomy of the head, being the first to describe the
small bones of the ear and also to recognize the orifices of Wharton's
ducts. Besides this, which would have been quite enough to have given
him a place in the history of anatomy, he added important details to
what had been previously known with regard to the intestines, and
described very clearly the ileocecal valve and suggested its function.
Matthew of Gradi, or De Gradibus, was the first, according to
Professor Turner in his article on Anatomy in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, who represented the ovaries in the correct light as
regards their anatomical relations and their function.
The most important of these fifteenth century investigators in pure
anatomy, however, is Berengarius or Berengar of Carpi, who did his
work at Bologna at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the
sixteenth {82} century. His commentaries on Mondino's work show how
much he added to that great teacher's instruction. If he had no other
distinction than that of having been the first to undertake a
systematic view of the several textures of which the body is composed,
it would have been sufficient to stamp him as a great original worker
in anatomy. He treats successively of the anatomical characters and
properties of fat, of membrane in general, of flesh, of nerve, of
villus or fibre, of ligament, of sinew or tendon, and of muscle in
general. Almost needless to say, he must have made many dissections to
obtain such clear details of information, and, as we shall see, he
probably did make many hundreds. If he had done nothing else but be
the first to mention the vermiform appendix, it would have been quite
sufficient to give him a distinction in our day. Everything that he
touched, however, he illuminated. His anatomy of the fetus was
excellent. He was the first to note that the chest of the male was
larger than in the female, while the capacity of the female pelvis was
in the opposite ratio. In the larynx he discovered the two arytenoid
cartilages. He recognized the opening of the common biliary duct, and
was the first to give a good description of the thymus gland. All
this, it must be remembered, before the end of the second decade of
the sixteenth century, that is, almost before Vesalius was born.
Berengar's work was done at Bologna. Some five years before his death
Bologna became a Papal city. There is no sign, however, that this
change in the political fortunes of the city made any difference in
Berengar's application to his favorite studies in anatomy. As we shall
see in the chapter on The Papal Medical School, already the Popes were
laying the foundations {83} of their own great medical school in Rome,
in which anatomy was to be cultivated above all the other sciences, so
that there would be no reason to expect from other sources of
historical knowledge any interruption of Berengar's work, and it did
not come.
A fifth great student of anatomy during the fifteenth century was
Benivieni, who has been neglected in the ordinary histories of anatomy
because his work concerned itself almost exclusively with
pathological, not with normal anatomy. In our increasing interest in
pathology during the nineteenth century, he has very properly come in
for his due share of attention. Professor Allbutt, in his address on
the Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery down to the Sixteenth
Century, declares that Benivieni should be revered as the forerunner
of Morgagni and as one of the greatest physicians of the late Middle
Ages. Benivieni's life occupies almost exactly the second half of the
fifteenth century, as he was born probably in 1448, and died in 1502.
Allbutt says:--
"He was not a professor, but an eminent practitioner in Florence, at
a period when, in spite of its Platonism, Florence on the whole was
doing most for science; for as Bologna turned to law, Padua turned
to humanism and philosophy. He was one of those fresh and
independent observers who, like Mondeville, was oppressed by the
authority neither of Arab nor Greek."
We are not interested, however, at the present time in what he
accomplished for surgery, though there are a number of features of his
work, including the crushing of stone in the bladder and his puncture
of the hymen for retained menses, as well as his methods of division
and slow extension of the cicatricial contractions {84} resulting from
burns near the elbow, which place him among the most ingenious and
original of surgical thinkers. It is his interest in dissection that
commends him to us here. He must have done a very great number of
autopsies.
His interest in the causes of disease was so great that he seems to
have taken every possible opportunity to search out changes in organs
which would account for symptoms that he had observed. His place in
anatomy and the history of pathology has not been properly appreciated
in this matter, and Professor Allbutt claims for him the title of
Father of Pathology, rather than for those to whom it has been given,
and demands for his work done in Florence during the second half of
the fifteenth century the credit of laying the real foundation-stones
of the great science of pathological anatomy. Unfortunately, he died
comparatively young and without having had time properly to publish
his own contributions to medical science. Professor Allbutt says:--
"The little book _De abditis causis morborum_ (brief title), was not
published in any form by Antony Benivieni himself, but posthumously
by his brother Jerome, who found these precious notes in Antony's
desk after his death, and with the hearty cooperation of a friend
competent in the subject, published them in 1506 in a form which no
doubt justly merits our admiration. Benivieni's chief fame for us is
far more than all this; it is that he was the founder of
pathological anatomy. So far as I know, he was the first to make the
custom and to declare the need of necropsy to reveal what he called
not exactly "the secret causes," but the hidden causes of diseases.
Before Vesalius, before Eustachius, he opened the bodies of the dead
as {85} deliberately and clear-sightedly as any pathologist in the
spacious time of Baillie, Bright and Addison. Virchow, in his
address at Rome, said Morgagni was the first pathological anatomist
who, instead of asking What is disease? asked Where is it?"
But Benivieni asked this question plainly before Morgagni: "Not
only," says he, "must we observe the disease, but also with more
diligence search out the seat of it." The precept is so important, I
will quote the original words: "Oportet igitur medicum non solum
morbum cognoscere, sed et locum in quo fit, diligentius
perscrutari."
Among the pathological reports are morbus coxae (two cases); biliary
calculus (two cases); abscess of the mesentery, thrombosis of the
mesenteric vessels; stenosis of the intestine; some remarkable cardiac
cases, several of "polypus" (clot, which was a will-of-the-wisp to the
elder pathologists); scirrhus of the pylorus, and probably another
case in the colon; ruptured bowel (two cases); caries of ribs with
exposure of the heart. He gives a good description of senile gangrene
which even Pare did not discriminate. He seems to have had remarkable
success in obtaining necropsies; concerning one fatal case he says
plaintively, "Sed nescio qua superstitione versi negantibus cognatis,"
etc. Of another he says, "cadavere publicae utilitatis gratia inciso"
(the case of cancer of the stomach). With this admirable and original
leader, Italian medicine of the fifteenth century closes gloriously,
to slumber for some fifty years, till the dayspring of the new
learning. Of his work Malpighi says, and apparently with truth, "up to
now it is the only work in pathology which owes nothing to anyone."
{86}
This should be enough, it seems to me, to settle the question that
anatomy was permitted very freely before Versalius's time. I have said
it in other places, but it may be well to recall here, that Berengar
did his dissection at Bologna just before and after the time it became
a Papal city and when Papal influence was very strong. In spite of the
fact that in 1512 Bologna passed under the dominion of the Popes,
there is no question of any interruption or hampering of Berengar's
work in anatomy, and as a matter of fact, this great anatomist did not
succeed to the professorship of anatomy, which had been held up to
this time by Achillini, until in the very year when Bologna came under
Papal sway, and had his opportunity to do his independent work only
after this. Professor Turner can scarcely find words strong enough to
set down his admiration for Berengar and his work. Besides what we
have already quoted he says that, "the science of anatomy boasts in
Berengar of one of its most distinguished founders."
The distinguished Edinburgh anatomist harbors no illusions with regard
to any supposed opposition of the Church to dissection or to the
development of anatomy. As a life-long student of anatomy who knew the
history of his favorite science, he appreciated very well just who had
been the great workers in it and where their work had been done. He
says that "Italy long retained the distinction of giving birth to the
first eminent anatomists in Europe, and the glory she acquired in the
names of Mondino, Achillini, Berengar of Carpi, and Massa was destined
to become more conspicuous in the labors of Columbus, Fallopius and
Eustachius." These are the greatest names in the history of anatomy
down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the single
exception of Vesalius.
{87}
All this of anatomical development in Italy at universities that were
directly under the ecclesiastical authorities would seem to settle all
question of interference by the Popes or the Church with any phase of
anatomical development. It does not seem sufficient for Dr. White,
however. When I called attention to all these details of the history
of anatomy, long before the reformation and before Vesalius, Dr.
White's response was the following paragraph in which he explains how
dissection came to be practiced at all, and reiterates not only his
belief that Pope Boniface's bull prevented dissection, but even
insists on what cannot but seem utterly absurd to any one who has read
even the brief account I have given here, that except at one or two
places, and then only to a very limited degree, dissection was not
practiced at all. Here is how the history of dissection must be viewed
according to Dr. White:--
"But Dr. Walsh elsewhere falls back on the fact that shortly after
the decree of Pope Boniface VIII., which struck so severe a blow at
dissection, the Venetian Senate passed a decree ordaining that a
dissection of the human body should be made every year in the city
of Venice, and he leaves his readers to conclude that this
effectually proves that dissection had not really been discouraged
by the Pope. The very opposite conclusion would be deduced by anyone
familiar with the relations between the Republic of Venice and the
Papacy. These two powers were always struggling against each other;
again and again the Venetian Republic, in maintaining its rights,
braved the Papal interdicts. The fact that it allowed dissections,
so far from proving that the Pope allowed them, would seem to prove
that in this case, and in so many other cases, and especially that
of {88} Vesalius of Padua, the Venetian Senate sought to show the
Vatican that it would yield none of its rights to clerical control.
This very fact--that Venice refused to be bound with regard to
anatomical investigation by an order from the Vatican--seems to be
entirely in the line with all the other facts in the case, which
show that the Roman court had committed itself, most unfortunately,
against the main means of progress in anatomy and medicine."
Here then is the answer that a modern historian and educator makes to
all the representations with regard to the development of anatomy and
the practice of dissection during the Middle Ages. If the practice of
dissection was permitted it was in spite of the Popes. The fact that
there were a dozen of medical schools in Italy at which dissection was
carried on is ignored. The great anatomists of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries simply did not exist--Dr. White knows nothing
about them. There must be no admission that the Popes permitted
dissection or any other form of science. Dr. White makes his last
stand by a really marvelous tour d'esprit. It was Venice defying the
Vatican that permitted dissection. This, he supposes, may help him,
for anatomy did develop very wonderfully at Padua when it was Venetian
territory. But, as pointed out by Roth, dissection was practiced very
successfully, and the anatomical tradition established at Padua,
before it came under the dominion of Venice. At all the other
important cities of Italy dissection was carried on. We have given
some of the evidence for Verona, for Pisa, for Naples, for Bologna,
for Florence, and, be it remembered, even for Rome. Padua was the
rival of Bologna in anatomy only for a comparatively short time.
Bologna {89} always maintained a primacy in the field of anatomy, and
never more so than after she became a Papal city at the beginning of
the sixteenth century. Vesalius taught and demonstrated not at Padua
alone, but also at Bologna and at Pisa. For two centuries Rome was the
most successful rival of Bologna, _and hundreds of dissections were
done in the Papal Medical School_.
Of course, the appeal to Venetian opposition to the Papacy as an
explanation for dissection being carried on in Italy in spite of
ecclesiastical regulations to the contrary is only a subterfuge. It
can only be found in histories written by those who refuse to see
facts as they were, because those facts do not accord with pet
theories as to Papal Opposition to Science, and the Warfare Between
Theology and Science, which must be maintained at all costs, though
with an air of apology always for having to tell such unpleasant
truths of these old-time religious authorities.
{90}
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ANATOMY
VESALIUS.
The Golden Age of discovery in anatomy culminated during the first
half of the sixteenth century. This will not be surprising if it is
but recalled that this period represents the culmination also of that
larger golden age of achievement in art and letters, which has been
called the Renaissance. Columbus and Copernicus were giving men a new
world and a new universe. Raphael, Michael Angelo, Lionardo da Vinci,
the Bellinis and Titian were creating a new world of art. Most of
these artists were deeply interested in anatomy. Every phase of human
thought was being born anew. Unfortunately, this word Renaissance has
given rise to many misunderstandings. Many people have taken its
significance of re-birth to mean that art and letters, and with them
education and thinking, were born again into the modern world at this
time with the coming in of the New Learning, just as if there had been
nothing worth while talking about in these lines of human
accomplishment in the preceding centuries. Taken in this sense, the
word Renaissance is entirely a misnomer. Magnificent achievements in
art and letters and every form of education preceded the Renaissance
by at least three or four centuries. The Gothic cathedrals and the
enduring artistic development that took place in their making, the
magnificent organization of technical education in the training of
artist artisans by the guilds of the time (we would be glad if our
technical schools could accomplish {91} anything like the same
results, for evidently, though the name technical education is our
invention, these medieval peoples had the reality to a high degree),
and finally the universities, which have remained essentially the same
down to our own day--all these serve to show how much was done for
every form of education many centuries before the beginning of the
Renaissance so-called.
It is not surprising that with this much of education abroad in the
land men succeeded in making enduring literature in every form and in
every country in Europe, and in setting examples of style in prose and
verse that succeeding generations have nearly always gone back to
admire lovingly. Such an amount of education and development of
thinking could not have come without profound attention to science,
and, as a matter of fact, there was much more anticipation of even
what is most modern in our scientific thinking than most scholars seem
to have any idea of. Personally, I have found, in writing the history
of The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries, more that interested me
in the science of this century than in almost any other department of
its wonderful educational development.
We have already seen that while anatomy had during preceding centuries
only the beginning of the development that it was destined to reach
during the sixteenth century, it would be a serious mistake to think
that the study of anatomy, having died in the old classical days, was
not re-born until the sixteenth century. This would be to commit the
error that many ardent devotees of the Renaissance make with regard to
all the accomplishments of this period. In spite of the contrary
almost universal impression, the Renaissance was not original {92} to
any marked degree. With the touch of the Greek spirit that had come
again into the world, it only carried the preceding work of great
original thinkers to a high order of perfection. This happened as well
in anatomy as in art and architecture and literature. Anatomical
science was a lusty infant of great promise when Vesalius, the Father
of Anatomy, came on the scene. The great painters, Raphael and
Lionardo and Michael Angelo, owed much to Giotto and Fra Angelico, who
had preceded them, but not more than Vesalius and his contemporaries,
who did such magnificent work in original anatomical investigation,
owed to Mondino, Bertrucci, Zerbi, Achillini, and above all to
Berengar of Carpi and Benivieni, who did their work before and just
after the sixteenth century opened. There is never a sudden
development in the history of any department of man's knowledge or
achievement, as there is nothing absolutely new under the sun, though
it is still the custom of the young man in his graduation essay to
talk of such things, and older men sometimes fail to realize the truth
that in history as in biology, life always comes from preceding
life--_omne vivum ex vivo_--and there is no such thing as spontaneous
generation.
If the achievements of this earlier period of scientific work, which
affected anatomy even more than any of the other sciences, be kept in
mind, the discussion of the Golden Age of Anatomy will find its proper
place in the history of the relation of the Popes to science. Though
the date of the Golden Age in Anatomy follows that of the so-called
reformation, there is absolutely no connection between the two series
of events, for the one took place in Germany and the other in Italy.
The Golden Age of Anatomy was indeed a perfectly {93} legitimate and
quite to be expected culmination of the anatomical interest which had
been gradually rising to a climax in the Italian universities during
the preceding century. It has a definite place in the evolution of
science, and is not a sudden or unlooked for phenomenon.
If there was any place in the world at the beginning of the sixteenth
century in which the ecclesiastical authorities had much to say with
regard to what should not be taught and what should not be studied in
the universities, it was Italy. In spite of this fact, all medical men
who wanted to do post-graduate work in medicine went down into Italy.
This was especially true for those who desired to obtain ampler
opportunities for anatomical study than were afforded by the rest of
Europe. In his maturer years as a student of medicine, Vesalius went
down to Italy in order to avail himself of the magnificent field for
investigation that was provided there. This favorable state of affairs
as regards research in anatomy had existed for more than a century
before his time. It continued to be true for at least two centuries
after his time. As a matter of fact, Italy was to the rest of the
world of the fifteenth and sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the
home of post-graduate opportunities in all sciences as well as in
medicine.
These are not idle words, but are fully substantiated by the lives of
the men who stand at the head of our modern medicine. More than a
decade before Vesalius was born, Linacre, the distinguished English
physician and founder of the Royal College of Physicians, went to
Italy to complete his medical studies and incidentally also to round
out his education in the midst of the new learning which was so
thoroughly cultivated there. When Linacre was leaving Italy, with true
classic spirit {94} he set up a little altar on the top of
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