The Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance

The Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the RenaissanceThe Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance

Mondino’s Anatomia

Mondino’s Anatomia

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Mondino de’ Liuzzi (d. 1326) & Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (1460–1530) Carpi commentaria cum amplissimis additionibus super anatomia Mundini una cum textu eiusdem in pristinum et nitorè redacto Bologna: Hyeronymus de Benedictis, 1521 The Lewis Stephen Pilcher Collection

Mondino completed the Anatomia in 1316, and it became a very popular work; it was soon integrated in the curriculum at European universities. While this work is partly based on the author’s experience performing dissections on human cadavers, it also perpetuates numerous errors from textual sources. Many of these mistakes were extant in the works of Galen, who often applied the results of animal dissection to human anatomy. An early commentator of Mondino’s work was the physician Jacopo Berengario da Carpi. In 1521, he published his extensive Commentaria on Mondino’s Anatomia, often challenging the assertions of Galen and later echoed by Mondino, such as the existence of the rete mirabile (“marvelous net”) of vessels at the base of the human brain.