'296 Dv Cra\^e*s Observatio?is on the 



Sprcngel to have delivered, in 1502, in the palace of Albert 

 Pio, lord of Carpi, on the body of a pig. From the testimony 

 of Tiraboschi, however, it appears that this could scarcely be 

 denominated a course of anatomical lectures. Albert Pio, who 

 was at once one of the most learned men, and the most liberal 

 patrons of science of the day, had formed the resolution of study- 

 ing anatomy ; and as this could be done, in these times, on the 

 bodies of pigs only, he availed himself of the assistance of Ber- 

 enger, who, as the son of a surgeon of Bologna, was known to 

 be adequate to the task. It appears, therefore, to have been 

 merely a course of private demonstrations to Pio and some of 

 his friends. Afterwards, however, Berenger, who appears to 

 have had a decided taste for anatomy, cultivated the art with 

 extreme assiduity ; and though professor of surgery in the Uni- 

 versity of Bologna, occupied himself mostly with dissection. 

 Though unlike his predecessors and contemporaries he dissected 

 few animals, he was most assiduous in the study of the struc- 

 ture of the human frame, and he declares that he dissected 

 above an hundred bodies. He is the author of a compendium, 

 of several treatises which he names introductions (Isagogae), 

 and of commentaries on the treatise of Mondino. Like him, 

 he is tinged with the mysticism of the Arabian doctrines ; and 

 ' though he employs the Grecian nomenclature in general, he 

 never forgets to give the Arabian terms, and often uses them 

 exclusively. In his commentaries on Mondino, which constitute 

 the most perspicuous and complete of his works, he not only 



rectifies the mistakes of that anatomist, but delivers minute, 

 f . . . 



and, in general, accurate anatomical descriptions. 



He is the first who undertakes a systematic view of the seve- 

 ral textures of which the human body is composed, and ink 

 preliminary commentary he treats successively of the anatomi- 

 cal characters and properties of fat, of membrane in general 

 ipanniculus), of flesh, of nerve, of villus or fibre (fdum), of 

 ■ ligament, of sinew or tendon, and of muscle in general. He 

 then proceeds to describe with considerable precision the muscles 

 of the abdomen, and illustrates their site and connections by 

 wooden cuts, which, though rude, are spirited, and show that 

 anatomical drawing was in that early age beginning to be un- 

 derstood. In his account of the peritoneum, he admits only 

 the intestinal division of that membrane^ and is at some pains 



2 



