WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 237 



Even during the lifetime of the gifted modeler there 

 were demands for specimens of her work from all parts of 

 Italy. From many cities in Europe, even from London and 

 St. Petersburg, she received the most nattering offers for 

 her services. So eager was Milan to have her accept a 

 position which had been offered her that the city authori- 

 ties sent her a blank contract and begged her to name her 

 own conditions. But she could never be induced to leave 

 the home of her childhood and the city which had witnessed 

 and applauded her triumphs of maturer years. 



Men of learning and eminence, on passing through Bo- 

 logna, invariably made it a point to call on the learned 

 professora in order to make her acquaintance and to see 

 her wonderful anatomical collection, which was celebrated 

 throughout Europe as Supellex Manzoliniana. Among these 

 visitors was Joseph II of Austria. So greatly was His 

 Majesty impressed by Anna's rare intellectual attainments 

 and by her marvelous skill in reproducing the various parts 

 of the "human form divine " that he could not take leave 

 of her without showing his appreciation of them by loading 

 her with gifts worthy of a sovereign. 1 



i Compendia Storico delta Scuola Anatomica di Bologna, p. 358, 

 by Michele Medici, Bologna, 1857, and Notizie degli Scrittori Bo- 

 lognesi, Tom. VI, p. 113, by Giovanni Fantuzzi, Bologna, 1788. 



Certain writers tell us of another woman who distinguished her- 

 self in anatomy in the early part of the fourteenth century. Her 

 name was Alessandra Giliani, who is said to have been a pupil and 

 an assistant of the celebrated Mondino, father of modern anatomy. 

 In addition to possessing great skill in dissection, she is reputed to 

 have devised a means of drawing the blood from the veins and ar- 

 teries even the most minute and then filling them with variously 

 colored liquids which quickly solidified. By this means, we are told, 

 she was able to exhibit the circulatory system in all its details and 

 complexity, and to have always on hand, for purposes of instruction, 

 a model that was absolutely true to nature. 



How much truth there may be in these statements regarding a 

 young girl, who was only nineteen when she died, is difficult to de- 

 termine. Medici, in concluding his account of her and referring 



