298 Dr Craigie's Observations on the 



and the fourth or posterior ventricle itself, the relations of which 

 he studied accurately. He rectifies the mistake of Mondino as 

 lo the olfactory or first pair of nerves, gives a good account of 

 the optic and others, and is entitled to the praise of originality 

 in being the first observer who contradicts the fiction of the 

 wonderful net (rete mirabile), and indicates the principal divi- 

 sions of the carotid arteries. He enumerates the tunics and 

 humours of the eye, and gives an account of the internal ear, 

 in which he notices the malleus and incus. 



While Berenger was thus advancing the interests of true ana- 

 tomical knowledge in Italy, it is a singular example of the slow- 

 ness with which knowledge was diffused at that time, that the 

 naturalists and physicians of France and other countries, were 

 in the most profound ignorance of the progress of the Italian 

 anatomists, and betrayed the most supine indifference to the 

 brilliant career of their Cisalpine neighbours. Paris indeed ap- 

 pears at this time to have possessed one anatomist, who, with 

 suitable means, had both the capacity and the desire to improve 

 the science. But the prejudices against the dissection of the 

 human body prevented him from availing himself fully of the 

 information which he derived from the animals which he dis- 

 sected ; and John Gonthier of Andernach is chiefly distinguish- 

 ed as a teacher, in whose school some of the first anatomists of 

 the succeeding age had acquired the elements of the science. 

 In this school Vesalius, Eustachius, and Fallopius, afterwards 

 so celebrated in the history of Italian anatomy, studied ; it is 

 believed, with some probability, that from Gonthier, Rondelet 

 derived his taste for animal anatomy ; and the circumstance of 

 his being the instructor of Michael Servet, whom he ranked 

 next to Vesalius as an anatomist, is sufficient to entitle him to 

 an honourable place in the history of anatomy. He seems to 

 have dissected few human bodies, and to have confined his re- 

 searches chiefly to those of the lower animals ; and in the course 

 of these he appears to have recognised the glandular body 

 placed in the middle of the mesentery of carnivorous animals, 

 and which he erroneously named pancreas. It has been since 

 distinguished by the name of pancreas Asellii. 



From the time of Mondino, Achillini, and Berenger, who 

 were professors in the University of Bologna, the rise of tTie 



