1881.] Early Practice of Medicine by Women. 65 
modern sights of Bologna, and in which Lelli’s anatomical 
wooden figures supporting the canopy over the professorial 
chair attract general admiration.” In the anatomical gal- 
lery of the university is to be seen her portrait in wax, 
modelled by herself at the request of many admiring friends. 
Anna Manzolini closed a laborious and honoured life in 1774, 
at the age of 58 years. 
The city of Bologna, in the middle of the eighteenth 
century, saw three gifted women simultaneously occupying 
seats in the faculty of its ancient university. Besides Laura 
Bassi and Anna Morandi-Manzolini, of whom we have 
briefly spoken, Maria Gaetano Agnesi was equally distin- 
guished. 
Maria Agnesi was born at Milan, March 16, 1718. At an 
early age she manifested a remarkable facility for acquiring 
languages, and when only 20 years old was able to discourse 
in French, Spanish, German, Greek, and Hebrew, besides 
her mother-tongue. She displayed marked ability also in 
philosophy and mathematics, and while still young sustained 
one hundred and ninety-one theses, which were afterward 
printed under the title “ Propisitiones Philosophicse.” In 
1748 Agnesi published a treatise on algebra, including the 
differential and integral calculus, in which she displayed 
wonderful judgment and erudition. This work (“ Institu- 
zioni Analitichi ”) was afterward translated by Colson, the 
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, and was 
used by the students of that university. In 1750 her father, 
who was Professor of Mathematics at the University of 
Bologna, fell sick, and she obtained permission of the good 
Pope BenediCtus XIV. to occupy her father’s chair. In 
person Agnesi is said to have been beautiful, modest, and of 
pleasing manners. Her severe studies overtaxed her deli- 
cate frame, and shortly after she renounced the world and 
took refuge among the Blue Nuns at Bologna. In this 
nunnery she lived several years a devotee and an invalid ; 
she died in 1799. 
While Laura Bassi taught physics, Anna Morandi-Man- 
zolini anatomy, and Maria Agnesi mathematics, in the 
Bolognese University, we might naturally expeCt the gentler 
sex to avail themselves of the opportunity of studying under 
their sisters’ instructions. And such, in faCt, was the case : 
the names of some of these students are recorded by the 
historian, many of whom received the degrees of DoCtor of 
Philosophy and DoCtor of Medicine. In 1799 DoCtor Maria 
delle Donne appears as Professor of Medicine and Obste- 
trics ; Clotilda Tambroni was Professor of the Greek 
