Science and Medicine

Alessandra Giliani

Alessandra Giliani (1307 – 26 March 1326) is known as the first woman to be recorded in historical documents as practicing anatomy and pathology. She's reputed to have worked as a prosector, preparing corpses for anatomical study, under the famed anatomist Mondino de Luzzi at the University of Bologna; although all evidence of her work has been either lost or destroyed. Due to the lack of records on Giliani (as well as on other Medieval women popularly connected to the University of Bologna), a number of modern historians, such as Paula Findlan, argue that Giliani was invented by notorious forger and pseudo-historian Alessandro Macchiavelli in the 18th Century; indeed, doubts had been expressed as early as 1857 in Michele Medici's History of the Bolognese School of Anatomy. If real, however, Giliani's purported contributions to the study of anatomy would be significant.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Cysticercosis
• ▸John Wilson Carmichael
• ▸Chlorine-releasing compounds

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.