Anatomical Dissections and Teaching in Padua (1540-1600)

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Based primarily on the notebooks of five students who studied medicine in Padua between 1540 and 1600, the aim of this project is to rewrite the history of post-Vesalian anatomical teaching and anatomical dissections at the University of Padua, the leading institution of its kind in contemporary Europe. Based on these very detailed student notes, which extend over altogether about 750 pages and which were, with one exception, unknown so far, as well as on other printed and manuscript sources, the project will highlight on four major areas of research about which we have only incomplete, fragmentary knowledge at this point. These can be best described by some guiding questions:1. Practices: How often were dissections performed, on which occasions and from where were the corpses obtained? How do the students describe the ways in which the anatomists proceeded at the dissection table? Which instruments were used? What was the place of sections, vivisection and experiments of/on animals?2. Anatomical teaching: Where and how was anatomical knowledge imparted? What was the place of private dissections in front of a small group of selected students, which the students record in great detail, in comparison with the public anatomical demonstrations on which historians have so far largely focused? Could the students take active part in the dissections and acquire practical anatomical skills? How did anatomical instruction at the dissection table relate to lectures on classical anatomical texts, as they are documented also for Padua in student notes?3. Methods and contents: Which concrete questions did the anatomists approach, surrounded by their students, at the dissection table? Did they also comment on the internal structure of the different parts? To what degree did they link structure and function? Where do the students record new anatomical findings before they were published in print, as in the case of the demonstration of the lacteal vessels in the abdomen and of the ileocecal valve by Falloppia?4. Relevance for practice: To what degree did the anatomists link anatomical findings to diseases and practical medicine and thus underlined the relevance of anatomical knowledge for medical practice? Did they also refer the results of autopsies on deceased patients? How did anatomical teaching relate to the teaching of surgery, which was, in Padua, also the responsibility of the professors of anatomy?