Born in medieval Florence, Mondino de Luzzi was the first and most important anatomist of the Middle Ages, a time when the medical knowledge of the human body was still generally based upon both Galen's anatomy and Aristotle's natural philosophy, due to the Catholic Church partial prohibition (and in earlier periods total prohibition) against human cadaver dissection. (Pope Boniface VIII prohibited in 1299 the dismembering of human cadavers, the removal of internal organs, and the separation of flesh from bones.) However, the Greek physician Claudius Galen (A.D. 181-210) had only dissected animals, and most of his physiology was based on ancient assumptions derived from the theory of the four elements as governing the different organs, taught in Ancient Greece. Mondino took the risks of clerical punishment (excommunication by the Church) and became the first medieval physician to dissect human cadavers at the University of Bologna, in his search...