In 1316, Mundinus issued his work on anatomy, which served as a text-book for more than two hundred years.

He quotes from Galen the amusing reasons why a man should write a book: "Firstly, to satisfy his own friends; secondly, to exercise his best mental powers; and thirdly, to be saved from the oblivion incident to old age." Scores of manuscripts of his work must have existed, but they are now excessively rare in Italy.

The book was first printed at Pavia in 1478, in a small folio without figures.

It was very often reprinted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The quaint illustration shows us the mediaeval method of teaching anatomy: the lecturer sitting on a chair reading from Galen, while a barber surgeon, or an "Ostensor," opens the cavities of the body.
I have already referred to the study of medicine by women at Salernum.
Their names are also early met with in the school of Bologna.