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Italian physician who marked the revival of medical practice
in the West following the Dark Ages. Arabian and Persian
doctors, the greatest of whom was
Avicenna, had continued the Hippocratic and Galenic
traditions, but their works remained in the framework of Greek
medicine and did not produce new methodologies. Although Mondino
de' Luzzi is historically important as one of the first
physicians of note following the Dark Ages, his medical
procedures were, in fact, a step backwards. He taught his
students while seated on an elevated chair, and employed a
barber surgeon to perform the actual dissections. He believed in
dissecting from the inside out, since internal organs rot the
most quickly. In the process, he inevitably destroyed parts of
the body in the process. Furthermore, Mondino de' Luzzi blindly
accepted
Galen's anatomy, even when a simple dissection would have
conclusively proven him to be at odds with actual observations.
He wrote a compendium of anatomy, which was basically a guide
for understanding Galen. This represented a regression from
scientific procedures, and stands out in sharp distinction to
Grosseteste's and
Roger Bacon's extensive experimentation and questioning of
established authorities which were being undertaken in
approximately the same period. Unfortunately for medicine, as
well as science at large, Mondino de' Luzzi's methods became
standard practice in medical schools until they were eventually
replaced by the sound observational and experimental practices
of
Vesalius.
 Avicenna,
Bacon (Roger),
Galen,
Grosseteste
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