Studies in the History and Method of Science

There was little or no progress in the knowledge of anatomy between the death of Mondino in 1327 and the sixteenth century. This appears the more remarkable when we recall how widespread was the practice of dissection during the period. In France, at the University of Montpellier, public dissections were decreed in the year 1377,121 and Catalonian Lerida followed suit in 1391.122 At Bologna, where dissection had long been customary, it received official recognition in the University Statutes in 1405,123 and the same event took place at Padua in 1429.

Public anatomies were instituted at the University of Prague in 1460, of Paris in 1478, and of Tübingen in 1485.124 For these 'Anatomies' the bodies of executed criminals were usually employed, and therefore the number of subjects available varied greatly in different localities.125 In addition to these regular dissections, there was certainly a considerable amount of post-?mortem examination, surreptitious (Plate XXVIII b126), or even open (Plate XXIX127), long before Benivieni published his memorable list of cases.128

Fig. 1.?From the French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Lyons, 1482. The first printed picture of dissection.

MS. fr. 184 fo. 14 r Plate XXIX.?A POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION. Late XIVth Century

VATICAN MS. HISPANICE 4804 fo. 8 r Plate XXX a.?A DEMONSTRATION OF SURFACE MARKINGS

BRISTOL REFERENCE LIBRARY MS. fo. 25 r Plate XXX b.?A DEMONSTRATION OF THE BONES TO ILLUSTRATE GUY DE CHAULIAC

Fig. 2.?Title-page of Mellerstadt's edition of the Anatomy of Mondino, Leipzig, 1493. The scene is laid in the open air.131

That so much industry was rewarded by so small an increase in knowledge may probably be attributed to the method adopted. The so-called 'anatomies' were conducted in the most formal manner. Bertuccio, for example, who succeeded Mondino as professor of Surgery at Bologna, was accustomed, as we learn from his pupil Guy de Chauliac, to give short systematic anatomical demonstrations on a fixed and rigid method.129 The occupant of the chair at this period was indeed no professor in the modern sense of the word. To expound the tradition of anatomy as it had reached him was regarded as the limit of his duty. Of any attempt to extend the bounds of knowledge, of any systematic endeavour to correct or improve the anatomical views of his predecessors, we find little or no trace. Indeed, at Padua it was expressly laid down in the statutes that the exposition of anatomy should follow the very words of Mondino.130

Early figures portraying the teaching of anatomy (Plate XXVII and Figs. 1–3, 5) usually show us a medical doctor sitting at a desk, well removed from the subject of dissection, and reading from his text-book the description of the part. Meanwhile an assistant, who is usually also a doctor, performs the actual work of dissection. The professor of Surgery, to whom the teaching of anatomy was entrusted, stands by with a pointer to indicate the different organs.

Sometimes the professor changes places with the reader at the desk. In some later MSS. the teacher is figured as himself handling the body and demonstrating to his pupil (Plate XXX a132 and b133), but there is evidence that the miniatures portraying this are the work of artists unfamiliar with dissection and with the teaching of anatomy.

Fig. 3.?A DISSECTION SCENE

From the Venice 1495 edition of 'Ketham' (compare Plate XXVII).

Fig. 4.?From the English translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1495. The first picture of dissection in an English-?printed book.

Fig. 5.?A LECTURE ON ANATOMY

From the 1535 Venice edition of Berengar of Carpi's Commentary on Mondino.

The study of anatomy had to contend with two great difficulties, want of subjects for dissection, and faith in the written word.

Thus, at Bologna, where it was arranged that every medical student of over two years' standing should attend an Anatomy once a year, no less than twenty students were admitted to see the anatomy of each man, and thirty to the anatomy of each woman.134 This was all the practical instruction received. Some other Universities had to be content with the cadaver of a single criminal per annum for the whole body of students.

In the first period during which the human body was dissected in Europe, the thirteenth century, a certain amount of progress was certainly made, despite the rarity of subjects. The rebirth of learning in the thirteenth century was not, however, as favourable to anatomical progress as might have been hoped. Galen, indeed, ceased to be a mere name, and the Latin translations of his text, or of its adumbra in the writings of the Arabians, became ever more familiar. On the other hand, with more authoritative texts in their hands, men were but the more inclined to follow the evil scholastic way, and to trust rather to the written words of the master than to the evidence of their own senses. Thus it came about that the second period, which covers the fourteenth and most of the fifteenth century, was really stationary so far as the first-?hand knowledge of anatomy was concerned. With the last decade of the fifteenth century, however, there opens a new and third period in the history of our subject. From that time dates the true era of anatomical renaissance, which may be regarded as continuing until the commencement of modern anatomy with the great work of Vesalius in 1543.

Plate XXXI.?From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345

at CHANTILLY

Plate XXXII.?From the MS. of GUY DE VIGEVANO of 1345

at CHANTILLY

We have said that throughout the second period, the formal demonstrations based on the declaimed text of Galen or Avicenna or Mondino were practically the sole opportunities afforded to either teacher or pupil for the investigation of the minuter details of the human frame. But in making this statement concerning the arrest of anatomical progress, we must expressly exclude the products of the mighty genius of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose anatomical researches were without influence, and remained long unnoticed.135 We must also omit evidence gathered from the work of such early Renaissance painters as Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429–98) or Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–88), for these pursued the study of anatomy in a special field and with a special object.136 Furthermore, there are a number of artists of similar date of whose anatomical studies we have no direct evidence, but who yet outlined the muscles of the nude human figure in such a way as leads us to suppose that they had investigated the superficial structures at least of flayed parts. Such is the suggestion of some of the work of Luca Signorelli (c.?1442–c.?1524), and of Andrea Mantegna (died 1506). With such reservations, however, it is probably true that no evidence is forthcoming until the last decade of the fifteenth century of any advance from the standpoint of Mondino.137

But if descriptive anatomy developed slowly in the hands of the physicians, the art of graphic representation of anatomical structures was still more backward. Several groups of anatomical drawings of mediaeval date have come down to our time, but examination of them shows that they have been drawn without direct reference to the human frame. Some of these figures are of the crude type known as the 'five-?figure series' (Plate XXXIII), mere traditional diagrammatic sketches.138 Hardly better or more instructive are the series of dissections which illustrate certain MS. works of Henri de Mondeville (Plate XXVIII a)139 and Guido de Vigevano (Plates XXXI and XXXII), 1345.140 A few sketches representing the separate organs have also survived (Fig. 6),141 but these never suggest that the draughtsman had before him the structure which he seeks to depict, and the drawings appear to have been made in order to illustrate contemporary physiological theory rather than observed anatomical fact. Even the magnificent illuminated Dresden Codex of Galen, prepared in France or Flanders as late as the second half of the fifteenth century, betrays not the slightest first-?hand knowledge of anatomy.142 Although the illustrations of this MS. are prepared with the utmost technical skill, they yet show us a teacher exhibiting to his pupils a heart of the form found on playing-?cards, and other anatomical figures scarcely more faithful to the facts (Plate XXXIV).

Fig. 6.?DIAGRAMS OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS

After Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 399 of about 1298, fos. 23 recto–24 recto.

The spirit of investigation of the artist who perforce went direct to nature, dissecting with his own hands and observing with his own eyes (Plate XXXVI), showed itself indeed far more fruitful than the tedious ex cathedra methodization of the professor.143 Yet the system of the schools needed to be combined with the freedom of the artist for the production of an effective anatomical work. What the projected treatise of Marcantonio della Torre (1473–1506) might have been we may guess from the anatomical sketches of Leonardo da Vinci (Plate XXXV), who was to have been associated with him in the work.144 In the event, however, the medical schools had to wait yet another generation before the subject was placed on a sound basis by André Vesale.

The Mondino pamphlet-for it is little more-used since its author's death in 1327 as a text-book in the schools of northern Italy, was first printed in 1478. Not until the last decade of the fifteenth century did there appear another work bearing evidence of the hand of a practical anatomist. This was an Italian translation of Ketham's Fasciculus medicinae, impressed at Venice in the year 1493.145 The volume comprises Mondino's pamphlet and a collection of other medical tracts that were probably put together by Giorgio di Monteferrato from the work of a writer of the previous century, for their contents are traceable to a fourteenth-?century MS.146 The text is neither original nor remarkable, but the Venice volume derives its importance from certain figures which appear in it for the first time.

Two of these plates are of great interest both intrinsically and also in relation to the history of anatomy. One of them is the magnificent representation of a dissection scene, which is regarded as perhaps the finest example of book illustration produced during the first century of typography147 (Plate XXVII). This work of the 'ma?tre aux dauphins', as the unknown artist is called by critics,148 is doubly interesting, for it is the subject of an experiment in colour printing, no less than four pigments being laid on by means of stencils. As early as 1457 the method of stencilling was employed for colouring the initials of a Psalter, and in 1485 Erhard Ratdolt in an astronomical work added yellow to the earlier red and black. The figure from which our plate is taken represents, however, the first attempt at a complex colour scheme and leads up to the work of Hugo da Carpi.149

In this picture the professor, a youthful figure perhaps intended to represent Mondino himself, is shown standing at a desk which hides his book. Around a corpse, laid on a trestle table before him, there cluster a number of men in doctor's robes. Their valid faces are sufficient to convince us that the artist is here presenting us with portraits. One of the listeners has removed his robe and stands with upturned sleeves and knife in hand, ready to make the first incision on the direction of the doctor, who points to the part with a wand held in the left hand. In the impression of 1495 and in those of later date, the book appears above the desk, the attitudes of the students are somewhat changed, and many other details are altered. In all these, however, the blocks have been recut and the result is artistically inferior150 (Fig. 3).

Fig. 7.?A FEMALE FIGURE LAID OPEN TO SHOW THE WOMB AND OTHER ORGANS

From the 1493 Venice edition of 'Ketham' translated into Italian. This is the first printed anatomical figure drawn from the object.

The second plate from the 1493 Ketham with which we are here concerned is the outline of a female body, in a traditional pose,151 laid open to exhibit some of the internal organs (Fig. 7). These had clearly been sketched from the object, and therefore this drawing, the first printed figure of its kind, may be said to introduce the new era for the investigation of the human frame. The anatomical renaissance had begun. Into a discussion of the full development of that age we cannot now enter. But the MS. of Manfredi, with which we have here to deal, was written at the very dawn of the new era and is itself one of its earliest documents.

An organized Medical Faculty existed at Bologna at least as early as 1156,152 though the first record of dissection there is of considerably later date. In February 1302 a certain Azzolino died under suspicious circumstances. Poison was suspected, an inquest was held and a post-?mortem examination ordered.

The investigation was conducted by two physicians and three surgeons, who unanimously agreed 'that the said Azzolino assuredly met his death by no poison, but on the contrary, we assert that the quantity of blood collected in the great vein known as the vena chilis [vena cava]153 and in the veins of the liver adjacent thereunto, has prevented the due movement of the spiritus throughout the body, and has thus produced the diminution or rather extinction of the innate heat and thereby induced a rapid post-?mortem discoloration. Of this condition we have assured ourselves by the evidence of our own senses and by the anatomization of the parts.'154

The first anatomical document emanating from the University of Bologna is, however, of still earlier date, and is the work of William of Saliceto (1210?–80). This writer was educated at Bologna, and it is claimed that he was the first to dissect the human body there.155 His Cyrurgia, which was completed in 1275 (editio princeps, Piacenza, 1476), is divided into five books, of which the fourth and shortest is devoted to anatomy. Its descriptions are brief and concise. They are often clearly the result of actual observation, and they show hardly any trace of the absurd and irritating teleology that the influence of the Arabians and of Galen made customary in early anatomical literature. The anatomy of Saliceto appears to us very sensible and so far as it goes practical. It betrays the method rather of the Salernitan than of the Arabian anatomical writings, and is on the whole the best European work of the kind before the Renaissance. It was, however, soon replaced by the text-book of Mondino di Luzzi (1285–1327),156 which, though inferior to that of Saliceto, held the field until the subject was revolutionized by Vesalius.

Plate XXXIII.?The FIVE-FIGURE SERIES BODLEIAN MS. ASHMOLE 399,

about 1292 Fos. 18 r–22 r VEINS, &c.????ARTERIES???????NERVES????????BONES??????MUSCLES

From the DRESDEN GALEN MS. Plate XXXIV.?DEMONSTRATIONS OF ANATOMY

Second half of XVth Century

Mondino was professor at Bologna till his death in 1327. His work, easily accessible in one of its many editions, 'is corrupted by the barbarous leaven of the Arabian schools, and his Latin defaced by the exotic nomenclature of Avicenna and Rhazes'.157 But it is not the language alone that has suffered. The schoolman's attitude, well fitted for the classification of ideas, is an ill instrument for the investigation of Nature, and in the scholastic Mondino the very basis of scientific judgement is undermined, so that he readily accepts the views of the ancients against what must often have been the evidence of his own senses. The work, however useful to the contemporary student, was thus essentially reactionary as against the efforts of the earlier Salernitan anatomists and of William of Saliceto. This is the more remarkable because it is quite clear that he was accustomed to demonstrate on the actual body-a privilege denied to the early Salernitan school,-and he was, moreover, a popular and successful teacher. His work is a manual of dissection rather than a treatise on anatomy. This, added to its conciseness and brevity, strengthened its appeal to the 'practical' man-an epithet claimed then, as now, by the majority of stupid and unpractical people. The personal influence and enthusiasm of its author no doubt helped also towards the phenomenal success of this work, which for two hundred years held a position without rival as the text-book of the medical schools of Italy, where even as late as the sixteenth century Mondino 'was still worshipped by all the students as a very god'.158

Mondino was succeeded in the chair of Surgery at Bologna by his pupil, the Lombard Bertuccio, who died in the Black Death of 1347. Bertuccio's surviving work is unnoteworthy, but he was the anatomical teacher of Guy de Chauliac, whose Surgery159 is of great value and was very influential in standardizing practice, especially in the north and west of Europe. Nevertheless it appears to us that the anatomical section is the weakest part of Guy's great work. The teleology that is a blot in Mondino has here become a perfect plague, and Guy's anatomy consists of one-?third description and two-?thirds wearisomely reiterated reasons for the existence of imperfectly described structures. Through Guy de Chauliac the anatomical tradition of Mondino passed over into the University of Montpellier.

A later fourteenth-?century Bolognese writer was Tommaso di Garbo (died 1370), who did little but comment on Avicenna. A surgeon of the next generation, however, Pietro d'Argellata, deserves to be remembered for his description of the examination of the body of Pope Alexander V, who died suddenly at Bologna on May 4, 1410. His account throws light on the customary procedure and may be rendered here.160

'I ordered the attendants', he says, 'first to cut the abdomen from the pomegranate [i.e. the Adam's apple or laryngeal cartilage161] to the os pectinis [i.e. the symphysis pubis]. Then, so that they should not rupture the intestines, I myself sought the rectum and ligatured it in two places and then cut it between. Next I removed all the intestines as far as the duodenum and dealt with them as with the rectum, and so I had the intestines clean and without fetor. After this I extracted the liver, seizing its ligaments; then the spleen and then the kidneys, and these were all placed together in a jar. I now passed to the spiritual members [i.e. the thorax] and removed lung and heart and all their ligaments. Then I ligatured the meri [the Arabian term for oesophagus] and removed the stomach. When this had been done there were some who wished to remove the tongue but knew not how. I however cut under the chin and extracted the tongue through that hole, together with trachea arteria [trachea] and meri. Then I passed to the arteria adorti [aorta] and vena chilis [vena cava]. Lastly I removed the ligatured remnant of the intestines as far as the anal margin.'

Giovanni da Concoreggio (died 1438), who was lector in Surgery at Bologna in the early part of the fifteenth century, left a few anatomical observations of little note,162 and not very much more can be said for his successors and Manfredi's contemporaries Gabriele Gerbi (de Zerbis, died 1505) and Alessandro Achillini (1463–1512). Gerbi163 does little but repeat in the most verbose fashion the work of Mondino and of Avicenna, some of whose errors, however-e.g. the three ventricles of the heart-he omits. He wrote also an anatomy of the infant, or rather of the foetus,164 and a treatise taken mainly from Avicenna's De generatione embryonis. Like all his work, these are in the full scholastic style of a professor of Logic, a position to which, in fact, he ultimately attained.

Achillini's work165 is but a slight advance on that of Gerbi. It is really little else than a note-book for students, and gives the baldest directions for dissection, accompanied by a few comments taken from Avicenna. Achillini occasionally ventures to criticize Mondino, and his work has at least the advantage of brevity. He has a claim to be remembered in that he was the first to describe the duct of Wharton and is said to have been the first to describe the ear ossicles, malleus and incus. Achillini, like Gerbi, was a windy and very 'scholastic' disputator. He was best known to his contemporaries as a supporter of the philosophy of Averroes. In 1506, when driven from Bologna with the other supporters of Bentivoglio, he became professor of Philosophy at Padua.

Fig. 8.?THE ABDOMINAL MUSCLES

From Berengar of Carpi's Commentary on Mondino, Bologna, 1521.

With Giacomo Berengario da Carpi we come at length to one who definitely advanced the science, and who may be regarded as the first modern anatomist, so far as printed works are concerned. He was professor of Surgery from 1502 to 1527, and during that period published his great anatomical work.166 This volume, though modestly put forward as a commentary on Mondino, is in reality an original contribution of great value. It is the earliest anatomical treatise that can properly be described as having figures illustrating the text (Fig. 8).167 Carpi does not hesitate to criticize the work on which he comments-as for instance when he denies the existence of the 'rete mirabile' below the brain, though descriptions of the 'rete mirabile' had been based on the statement of no less an authority than Galen. Furthermore he was the first to describe the vermiform appendix, and he gave the earliest correct account of several other organs, e.g. the choroid plexus and the olfactory nerves. He was an industrious dissector, and he tells us that he had examined more than a hundred bodies.

With Carpi we close our series of Bolognese anatomists. Into that group we now proceed to fit the writer with whom we are here specially concerned, Hieronymo Manfredi.

From a drawing in the Library, WINDSOR CASTLE Plate XXXV.?VIEW OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS

LEONARDO DA VINCI

From a Drawing in the ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD, attributed to BARTOLOMEO MANFREDI (1574?–1602) Plate XXXVI.?THE TWO FIGURES DISSECTING ARE TRADITIONALLY SAID TO REPRESENT MICHELANGELO AND ANTONIO DELLA TORRE

Hieronymo Manfredi was a member of a family that had already for more than two centuries provided distinguished citizens, and especially physicians, to the city of Bologna.168 He was born about the year 1430 and was educated at the University of Bologna. Here in 1455 he was laureatus in Philosophy and Medicine, and here he became professor of the latter subject in 1463.169

During the second half of the fifteenth century, a perfect mania for the study of astrology infected Italy and penetrated equally into the Court, the Church, and the Academy. The profession of Medicine was far from immune, and at the University of Bologna, where a chair of Astrology had long been established,170 the study was pursued with ardour and enthusiasm. Here Manfredi early devoted himself to that will-o'-the-wisp, the pursuit of which absorbed and sterilized many of the best intellects of his day. By the year 1469 he was already regarded as an authority on the vainest of studies,171 and as the years went on he seems to have devoted himself to it ever more and more. The generally credulous character of Manfredi's astrological ideas may be gathered from the page of his Prognosticon ad annum 1479 which we here reproduce (Fig. 10).

The history of Manfredi's connexion with the University of Bologna may be briefly told. He appears for the first time on the professorial roll in 1462, when we find him giving the 'extraordinary' lectures on Philosophy, a subject then regarded as under especial charge of the physicians. In 1465 he was conducting the 'ordinary' course in Philosophy, and at the same time giving occasional lectures on Medicine. In the following year he was called to the chair of Theoretical Medicine, and in 1469 he helped the Faculty out of a difficulty by giving lectures on 'Astronomia' in place of the aged professor Giovanni de Fundis. The latter died in 1474, and from that date onward Manfredi assumed responsibility for the course on 'Astronomia'. Among the colleagues who joined him were Gabriele de Gerbi, who became lecturer on Logic in 1476, Filippo Beroaldo, who became lecturer on Rhetoric and Poetry in 1479, and Alessandro Achillini, who became lecturer on Logic in 1484.172

Such was the regard for Manfredi's powers of astrological prediction that to all the University announcements of his course of lectures on Astronomy is added 'cum hoc quod faciat iudicium et tachuinum'.173 In spite of his proficiency in the science, however, he was unable to foretell his own death. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola writes of him thus derisively:

'quo anno [1493] obiit omnimoda[m] uite incolumitate[m] fuerat pollicitus Hieronymus manfredus astrologus nostra aetate singularis: a quo tamen nihil mirandum minus praeuisam aliorum mortem: qui nec suam ipse praeuiderit: nam cum proxima estate uita sit functus: in istius tame[n] anni publico uaticinio qui s[cilicet] ei fuit fatalis: multa & mira sequenti anno dicturum se non semel pollicebatur. Qui nescio oppignoratam fidem quomodo reluet: nisi forte de caelo uerius nunc terrena despiciat q[uam] de terra oli[m] caelestia suspiciebat.'174

Manfredi died in 1493 and was buried in the church of Santa Margarita in Bologna. This church no longer exists, but it contained in the eighteenth century a tomb bearing the inscription:

HIERON. MANFREDO BONON. PHILOSOPHO AC MEDICO SVAE AETATIS NEMINI SECVNDO ASTRONOMORVMQVE CITRA INVIDIAM FACILE PRIMARIO. POSVIT SVPERSTES IOAN. FILIVS SVISQVE POSTERIS. VALE ATQVE ILLVM VALERE OPTA.175

Manfredi left a widow, Anna, who was still living in 1496 with a household of ten persons in the Via S. Margarita.176 The houses on one side of this street backed on the very walls of the buildings belonging to the 'University of Medicine',177 and we may suppose that Hieronymo Manfredi had resided here on that account. His surviving son, Giovanni, lived hard by in the Via S. Antonio di Padoa.

It cannot be said that Manfredi's printed works suggest great scientific attainments. All are permeated by the same astrological obsession. They comprise the following:

(a) The editio princeps of Ptolemy's Cosmographia and Tabulae Cosmographiae, the best-?known printed work to which Manfredi's name is attached. He was associated in its production with the famous scholar Filippo Beroaldo, and the finely produced volume was published at Bologna in 1472 (?),178 and dedicated to the memory of Pope Alexander V (died 1410). It is interesting as containing the first printed map of England (Fig. 9). At the end of the work we read:

'Accedit mirifica imprimendi tales tabulas ratio. Cuius inuentoris laus nihil illorum laude inferior. Qui primi litterarum imprimendarum artem pepererunt in admirationem sui studiosissimum quemque facillime conuertere potest. Opus utrumque summa adhibita diligentia duo Astrologiae peritissimi castigaueru[n]t Hieronimus Mamfredus & Petrus bonus. Nec minus curiose correxerunt summa eruditione prediti Galeottus Martius & Colla montanus. Extremam emendationis manum imposuit philippus b[e]roaldus.'

THE FIRST PRINTED MAP OF ENGLAND.

From the 1472 (?) Bologna Ptolemy, edited by Manfredi and others.

(b) Liber de homine: cuius su[n]t libri duo. Primus liber de conservatione sanitatis.... [Liber secundus de causis in homine circa compositione[m] eius], Bologna, 1474. The work is in Italian, and consists of a number of paragraphs, each beginning with the word 'perchè'. There is a servile dedicatory epistle in Latin addressed to Giovanni Bentivoglio. The first book is concerned with diet, and occupies two-?thirds of the volume. The second book answers questions on the subject of physiognomy and bears resemblance in many passages to the Anatomy. It is taken in the main from the pseudo-?Aristotelian Problemata. The book is without pagination or figures. It is well printed, and illuminated examples are not infrequently encountered.

This work was very popular. In 1478, during the lifetime of its author, it was audaciously pirated at Naples with the following incipit: 'Incomenza el Libro chiamato della uita costumi natura & om[n]e altra cosa pertine[n]te tanto alla conservatione della sanita dellomo quanto alle cause et cose humane. Co[m]posto per Alberto Magno filosofo excellentissimo.'

In 1497, after Manfredi's death, the work appeared in black-?letter folio at Bologna, with its author's original dedication slightly altered. The text in this edition commences, 'Perchel sophio nele cose che noi viuemo: & lo indebito modo del viuere nostro: induce in noi egritudine'.

In 1507 it appeared at Venice in small black-?letter quarto as Opera noua intitulata Il perche utilissima ad intendere la cagione de molte cose. By this title, Il Perchè, the work, which ran through numerous editions, has usually been known. It continued to be reprinted as late as 1668.

(c) A treatise on the Plague: Tractate degno & utile de la pestile[n]tia co[m]posto p[er] el famosissimo philosopho medico & astrologo maestro Hieronymo di manfredi da Bologna, Bologna, 1478. This was translated into Latin by the author himself in the same year. The work owes much to Avicenna, but contains some original clinical observations, and shows a certain independence of the prevailing spirit of the age by quoting opinions of contemporary as well as of ancient physicians. The remedies are similar to those recommended by John of Bourdeaux in his widely distributed tract on the plague, and are probably derived ultimately from the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni.

(d) Prognosticon ad annum 1479, Bologna, 1478. We reproduce the terminal page of this work (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10.?The last page of Manfredi's Prognosticon ad annum 1479, Bologna, 1478.

From his tomb in the Church of S. Giacomo Maggiore at Bologna Plate XXXVII.?GIOVANNI BENTIVOGLIO II

BRIT. MUS. MS. ROY. 7 F VIII, fo. 50 v Plate XXXVIII a.?ROGER BACON'S

DIAGRAM OF THE EYE.

XIIIth Century

From a drawing in WINDSOR CASTLE Plate XXXVIII b.?LEONARDO DA VINCI'S

DIAGRAM OF THE HEART

Early XVIth Century

(e) Prognosticon anni 1481, in which is embodied Oratio contra turcos & hostes Christianorum, s. 1. Jan. 1481.

(f) Centilogium de medicis et infirmis, Bologna, 1488. With a dedication to Bentivoglio. This short work is wholly astrological, and consists of one hundred precepts concerning the relationship of the stars to various diseases and conditions. Reprinted Venice, 1500, and Nuremberg, 1530.

The following three works are attributed to Manfredi, but are not mentioned in Hain, Copinger, or Reichling's lists of Incunabula; we have not seen any of them and their existence is doubtful.

(g) Ephemerides astrologicae operationes medicas spectantes, mentioned in the Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Aerzte of E. Gurlt and A. Hirsch. Possibly it represents another edition of (e).

(h) Quaestiones subtilissimae super librum aphorismorum, Bologna, 1480 (?), mentioned by Haller.179 Possibly it represents another edition of (b).

(i) Chiromantia secundum naturae vires ad extra, Padua, 1484, mentioned by Haller.179