science and medicine in early modern venice 709
guide to medicinal plants produced in antiquity, a work consulted by
physicians for the next 1500 years. Barbaro’s latin edition served physi-
cians until the first Greek edition of dioscorides was published by aldus
Manutius.
alessandro Benedetti (1445–1525), a native of Verona, spent most
of his career as a medical practitioner in Venice and taught medicine
there, although he was evidently never on the faculty at Padua.28 Bene-
detti’s Anatomice (1502) reflects not university teaching but the civic and
humanist environment of Venice in the 1480s and 1490s.29 repudiating
arabo-latin scholastic medicine, Benedetti abandoned the scholastic
style of presentation characteristic of the medieval works on anatomy
and sought to develop a medical terminology based on ancient authors,
often by transliterating Greek terms. at the same time, he relied on his
record of personal experience both as a dissector and medical practitio-
ner, and he insisted on the importance of dissection for both physicians
and surgeons.
The Anatomical Revolutionalthough the humanists denounced “innovators” such as avicenna and
the Paracelsians, in fact they supported some of the most important
medical novelties of the day. among these was a reform of anatomy
that took place at the University of Padua and spread to the rest of italy
and europe. its leader was a young anatomy professor from Belgium
named andreas Vesalius (1515–64). although human dissection had been
practiced at Padua since the early 14th century, previously surgeons carried
out the anatomical demonstrations to accompany lectures by professors
of anatomy.30 Vesalius, however, insisted upon doing the dissection of
cadavers himself and maintained that anatomy could not be learned
simply by reading Galen but required direct observation of the opened
28 Giovanna Ferrari, L’esperienza del passato: Alessandro Benedetti, filologo e medico
umanista (Florence, 1996).
29 alessandro Benedetti, Historia corporis humani sive Anatomice, ed. Giovanna Ferrari
(rome, 1998).
30 on public anatomies, see Giovanna Ferrari, “Public anatomy lessons and the
carnival: The anatomy Theatre of Bologna,” Past and Present 117 (1987), 51–106; andrea
carlino, Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning, trans. John
Tedeschi and anne c. Tedeschi (chicago, 1999).