page_title: History of medicine
section_title: Padua and Bologna
hierarchical_section_title: History of medicine / Renaissance to early modern period 16th–18th century / Padua and Bologna
caption_attribution_description: Español: La Fábrica de Vesalio contenía muchos dibujos extremadamente detallados de disecciones humanas, algunos de ellos en posturas alegóricas. English: Vesalius' Fabrica contains many detailed drawings of human dissections, some of them in allegorical poses. Image from Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (1543), page 190.
context_page_description: The history of medicine shows how societies have changed in their approach to illness and disease from ancient times to the present. Early medical traditions include those of Babylon, China, Egypt and India. Sushruta, from India, introduced the concepts of medical diagnosis and prognosis. The Hippocratic Oath was written in ancient Greece in the 5th century BCE, and is a direct inspiration for oaths of office that physicians swear upon entry into the profession today. In the Middle Ages, surgical practices inherited from the ancient masters were improved and then systematized in Rogerius's The Practice of Surgery. Universities began systematic training of physicians around 1220 CE in Italy.
  Invention of the microscope was a consequence of improved understanding, during the Renaissance. Prior to the 19th century, humorism was thought to explain the cause of disease but it was gradually replaced by the germ theory of disease, leading to effective treatments and even cures for many infectious diseases. Military doctors advanced the methods of trauma treatment and surgery.
context_section_description: University training of physicians began in the 13th century.
  The University of Padua was founded about 1220 by walkouts from the University of Bologna, and began teaching medicine in 1222. It played a leading role in the identification and treatment of diseases and ailments, specializing in autopsies and the inner workings of the body.  Starting in 1595, Padua's famous anatomical theatre drew artists and scientists studying the human body during public dissections. The intensive study of Galen led to critiques of Galen modeled on his own writing, as in the first book of Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica. Andreas Vesalius held the chair of Surgery and Anatomy (explicator chirurgiae) and in 1543 published his anatomical discoveries in De Humani Corporis Fabrica. He portrayed the human body as an interdependent system of organ groupings.  The book triggered great public interest in dissections and caused many other European cities to establish anatomical theatres.
  At the University of Bologna the training of physicians began in 1219. The Italian city attracted students from across Europe.  Taddeo Alderotti built a tradition of medical education that established the characteristic features of Italian learned medicine and was copied by medical schools elsewhere. Turisanus (d. 1320) was his student.  The curriculum was revised and strengthened in 1560–1590.  A representative professor was Julius Caesar Aranzi (Arantius) (1530–89). He became Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the University of Bologna in 1556, where he established anatomy as a major branch of medicine for the first time. Aranzi combined anatomy with a description of pathological processes, based largely on his own research, Galen, and the work of his contemporary Italians.  Aranzi discovered the 'Nodules of Aranzio' in the semilunar valves of the heart and wrote the first description of the superior levator palpebral and the coracobrachialis muscles. His books (in Latin) covered surgical techniques for many conditions, including hydrocephalus, nasal polyp, goitre and tumours to phimosis, ascites, haemorrhoids, anal abscess and fistulae.
caption: Andreas Vesalius's 1543 De humani corporis fabrica contained intricately detailed drawings of human dissections, often in allegorical poses.
exif: {}