Anna Lantz
Stockholm, Sweden

Mondino de’ Liuzzi (c. 1270–1326), or Mondino, was a professor of practical medicine at the University of Bologna, where he introduced human anatomy and dissection, a subject that had not been taught in Europe since antiquity. During the dissections, Mondino would read aloud from his own manual, Anatomia, which was written in Latin, and a barber-surgeon would perform the dissection while an ostensor (or demonstrator) translated the professor’s words as he directed the audience’s attention to the relevant body parts. Mondino’s model for the teaching of anatomy was used well into the 1500s. The way the anatomical demonstrations were performed is illustrated on the title pace of Johannes de Ketham’s (death c. 1490) Fascicolo di medicina, first printed in 1491.