Part 19 (1/2)

[Footnote 15: Taddeo, who was born in 1215, according to our usually accepted traditions in the matter, would have been seventy-five years of age when Mondino as a youth of scarcely more than fifteen went to the University. It might seem that so old a man would have very little influence over the young man. Taddeo, however, had, as we have said, a very strenuous old age. Everything in life had come to him late. He was well past thirty before he began to study philosophy and medicine, having been a seller of candles from necessity because of poverty in his younger years. His great success in practice came when he was past forty. He first began to teach when he was forty-five, and he was nearly fifty-five before he began to write. According to tradition he married when he was nearly eighty--whether for the first or second time is not said--and while this might be considered, and would in some cases be, an indication of weakness of character (it would probably depend on whether he married or was married), it seems in his case to have indicated a vigor of body and character which shows very clearly how great was the possibility of his influence as a teacher having been maintained even up to this late time of life, and thus influencing a pupil who is to represent the most potent influence at the beginning of the next century.]

[Footnote 16: _Medical Library and Historical Journal_, 1906.]

[Footnote 17: Pilcher (_loc. cit._) tells of her tomb. I venture to change his translation of the inscription in certain unimportant particulars. He says:

”We know the very place where she was buried in front of the Madonna delle Lettre in the Church of San Pietro e Marcellino of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Mareto, where her a.s.sociate, Agenio, mourning and inconsolable, placed a tablet with this inscription:

D . O . M .

Vrceo . Contenti Alexandrae . Galinae . Pvellae . Persicetanae Penicillo . Egregiae . Ad . Anatomen . Exhibendam Et . Insignissimi . Medici . Mundini . Lucii Paucis . Comparandae . Discipulae . Cineres Carnis . Hic . Expectant . Resurrectionem Vixit . Ann . XIX . Obiit . Studio . Absunta Die XXVI Martii . A . S . MCCCXXVI Otto . Agenius . l.u.s.trula.n.u.s . Ob . Eam . Demptam Sui . Potiori . Parte . Spoliatus . Sodali . Eximiae Ac . De . Se . Optime . Meritae . Inconsolabilis . M . P .

This inscription may be translated as follows:

In this urn enclosed The ashes of the body of Alexandra Giliani, a maiden of Periceto; Skilful with her brush in anatomical demonstrations And a disciple equalled by few, Of the most noted physician, Mundinus of Luzzi, Await the resurrection.

She lived 19 years: she died consumed by her labors March 26, in the year of grace 1326.

Otto Agenius l.u.s.trula.n.u.s, by her taking away Deprived of his better part, his excellent companion, Deserving of the best, Has erected this tablet.”

[Footnote 18: This is so striking that I quote their actual words from Gurlt, p. 704: ”_Multoties fit percussio in anteriori parte cranei et craneum in parte frangitur contraria._”]

[Footnote 19: ”Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery Down to the Sixteenth Century,” London, 1904.]

[Footnote 20: Of course, for any extended knowledge of Mondeville, a modern reader must turn to Nicaise's translation of his ”Chirurgia,”

which, with an introduction and a biography, was published at Paris in 1893. Nicaise's publication of this and of Guy de Chauliac's treatise has worked a revolution in medical history and, above all, has made these old authors available for those who hesitate to take up a work written entirely in Latin.]

[Footnote 21: In the very first book containing some account of human anatomy, a German volume by Conradus Mengenberger, called ”Puch der Natur,” the date of printing of which is about 1478,--that is, less than ten years after the printing of the very first book, the ”Biblia pauperum,” which appeared in 1470,--there are, according to Haller in his ”Bibliotheca Anatomica,” a series of ill.u.s.trations. This is the first ill.u.s.trated medical work ever published.]

[Footnote 22: Fordham University Press, New York, 1908.]

[Footnote 23: Fordham University Press, New York, 1908.]

[Footnote 24: See picture of the hospital ward at Tonnerre, in ”The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries,” 3rd edit., New York, 1911.]

[Footnote 25: ”The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery,” by T.