64 Early Practice of Medicine by Women . [February, 
imagination active.” She died in the year 1778, at the age 
of 67. 
Laura Bassi does not seem to have pursued medical stu- 
dies, and certainly never engaged in practice ; but any 
account of the gifted women of Bologna who laboured in 
this direction would be incomplete without a brief notice of 
Madame Veratti. 
Contemporary with this interesting woman lived another, 
less gifted but scarcely less renowned. Anna Morandi was 
born at Bologna five years later than Lauri Bassi, and died 
four years earlier. She became the wife of Giovanni Man- 
zolini, a poor, hard-working maker of anatomical models. 
Manzolini was an expert painter and modeller in wax, and 
was employed by one Lelli to construct a series of ana- 
tomical models for the use of the professors in the Institute 
of Bologna. Anna not only aided her husband, but soon 
surpassed him in skill, and particularly in that scientific 
knowledge upon which the success of their joint labours so 
largely depended. About this time Giovanni Antonio Galli, 
a skilful surgeon and professor of Gynecology, opened a 
school of obstetrics in his house, and, encouraged by him, 
Anna began to lecture on anatomy to private classes. In 
these lectures she not only imparted with peculiar talent the 
knowledge derived from her husband, but she also commu- 
nicated many discoveries made by herself. So great was 
her skill in all dissections requiring delicacy of touch and 
minuteness of detail, and so clearly did she demonstrate, 
both theoretically and pradtically, the wonderful structure 
of the human body, that she rapidly acquired a European 
reputation, and her ledture-room was frequented by students 
of all countries. 
In 1755 Anna Manzolini became a widow, and was left 
with very slender means of support, but her good qualities 
raised up friends who secured for her a comfortable sub- 
sistence. Though she received tempting offers from other 
Italian universities, and even from England and Russia, she 
preferred to remain in her native city, Bologna. Not long 
after her husband’s death she was appointed to the chair of 
Anatomy in the Bologna Institute. 
Anna Morandi-Manzolini enjoys the distinction of having 
been the first “ to reproduce in wax such minute portions of 
the human body as the capillary vessels and the nerves.” 
Her collection of anatomical models, still to be seen at the 
Institute of Science, bears silent testimony to her remark- 
able skill and accurate knowledge. “ Her lectures were 
delivered in the fragrant cedar hall which is one of the 
