For those who have never heard of Mondino de Luzzi, also known as Mundinus, and for those who want to consolidate their general culture with a reference name, then this is the perfect character.

why Because this man was a pillar of science at a time when Europe was just emerging from the so-called Dark Ages and was taking its first timid steps towards the Renaissance. Well, Mondino was one of the grandfathers of modern science, and it would have taken us a while to figure it out without him.

But, since we do not want to overwhelm you, we suggest to emphasize who he was, what he wanted from life and in what context he appeared.

In order not to hold you to the fire, because we can telepathically feel you biting your nails with impatience, let’s just say that De Luzzi was a good man. Just so you know. And rich to boot. A young child born in Bologna around 1270, it is estimated, but it is not known for sure, could easily have led a merry life with all that comes with it, since he had a lot of money.

Doctors, apothecaries, university professors, people with high connections had a place to support all the known vices that a young man of the 13th century could engage in.

This was not to be, for being naturally educated, De Luzzi quickly caught the hint of his father’s blows to the head, and planted his stomach firmly on the book. So it happened that at the age of only 20 he graduated from the College of Medicine and the College of Philosophy, and then moved to the University of Bologna, where he met the hottest characters in the world of medicine at the time.

Well, now comes the fun part when you see what he did. But until then, we must give him some arcotite and present you with a brief history of the field in which he performed. Two or three sentences, no more.

Herophilus of Chalcedon, an ancient physician who lived in the 4th century BC. he was the first person in this world to conduct autopsies on human corpses for scientific purposes. Please, we have some data about the first one. Apparently the Egyptians did this before him, but we don’t have much information from them on the subject, so we stick with Herophilus.

Well, Herophilus was not exactly a good man. why Because in addition to autopsies done for scientific purposes, over 600 vivisections are said to have also been done on POWs, so we don’t even care about the purpose.

In general, he was also the last person to perform autopsies. After him, these things were forbidden, and medicine had to content itself with particularly comparative terms, considering that only the dissection of animals was permissible.

Moreover, the work of the master Herophilus was lost when the Library of Alexandria was destroyed, and only quotations from profiled authors remained. By the way, the most outstanding physician of antiquity, Aelius Galen, sacredly quoted it. Finally.

For over 1,500 years, dissection has only been done on the battlefield, in torture chambers, but never to sit down and engage in the scientific aspects of the problem. This issue changed with the accession to the throne of Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire, which is also called the Great.

Frederick was called the Great. Being a madman, the emperor issued a decree authorizing autopsies in order to change something in the medicine of the time, which, between us, rivaled the black plague, typhoid fever, the Tartars, and the locusts combined in the number of victims. place. Pope Nicholas II also supported this initiative, so the future was good.

One way or another, the world began to show signs of understanding, as evidenced by the appearance of the universities of Paris (1150), Bologna (1158), Oxford (1167), Montpellier (1181), Padua (1222) and others. Well, that’s how we got to our Mondino de Luzzi, because we started with an idea.

Mundinus was the first person in this world to perform a sanctioned autopsy, dating back to the 4th century BC. and until 1315. Finally, there would be one more, the French surgeon Henri de Mondeville, who precisely in 1315 also performed a similar work, but in Montpellier.

The difference was that Henrique was operating without authorization, so this does not apply. Mundinus, in his and his family affairs, had no such problems. Even the corpses of the condemned were brought to him to put on his head.

Well, our Mondino was also the first person on the planet, or even in the solar system, you might say, to introduce anatomy and dissection into a university curriculum. From Emperor Frederick II’s reading, you still had to study philosophy and literature for about 3 years before starting to study medicine. He no longer walked with a limp.

Drop the school in the nose. And Mondino de Luzzi was the master in imposing new rules.

Practically with him, Western medicine was fundamentally revolutionary, and the ancient ideas or superstitions on which the doctors of the time were based began to be rejected. De Luzzi was known for sitting in a chair while his assistants performed the autopsies as he directed, quoting aloud so that the entire audience understood what the author was trying to say. He actually read Galen. So he realized that the novel was also wrong. It was inappropriate to compare a person’s entrails with a pig, a monkey or a dog, as was done in ancient Rome.

Mondino noticed this and, although it was not easy to hit on sound ideas, he left a few lizards to keep those who needed to be caught standing. What will we say? Mondino imposes scientific rules based on observation, as is still done today, in a world where you’d be kicking yourself if you said you didn’t believe in goblins and dragons.

In any case, to sum up, this Mundino was a pioneer in anatomy. Such a Leif Erikson, who took the first steps into the world… not completely new, but unknown. That was all, remember his name. The next character, we warn you, will be big.

Bibliography:

• Beasley AW, 1982, Orthopedic aspects of medieval medicine, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, volume 75, p.970-975

• Ghosh, S.K., 2015, Autopsy of the human cadaver: a historical account from ancient Greece to the modern era, Anat Cell Biol, vol. 48(3), pp. 153-169

• Mavrodi, A., Paraskevas, H., 2014, Mondino de Luzzi: a bright figure in the darkness of the Middle Ages, Croat Med J., vol. 55 (10., pp. 50-53).

• Rengachary SS et al., 2009, The Development of Anatomical Science in the Late Middle Ages: The Roles of Mondino de Liuzzi and Guido da Vigevano, Neurosurgery, Vol 65(4), pp 787-793