VIVISECTION OF MEN. 415 they were sometimes poisoned by the anatomists themselves; but there is not the slightest indication that any of them were vivisected, and the strongest possible evidence to the contrary.1 So far from being eager to vivisect condemned criminals, the early anatomists frequently saved their lives. Space confines us to the following well authenticated case extracted from the archives of the Medical Faculty of Vienna by Diomedes Cornarius : "In the year 1492, the body of Conrad Braitenauers, hanged for robbery, was given over to the medical faculty to be dissected. The physicians, noticing that there was still some vital spirit in him, at once bled him largely from both cephalic veins, and administered other restoratives. He was then seized with convulsions of the whole body, so that it took four strong men to hold him, lest he should kill himself over again, for he was quite out of his mind. He said afterwards that he could recollect nothing that had happened to him since he was in court. Finally he was sent in charge of the bedel to his home where this story was painted as a miracle. He is reported, however, to have been effectually hanged again for new thefts, thus verifying the vulgar saying: 'It is hard to drown what is due to the crows (quod corvis debetur, vix submergitur)." The only case of human vivisection for which there seems fairly good evidence is the following, taken from John of Troyes Histoire de Louis XI., known for no very good reason as the "Chronique Scandaleuse": "In January, 1474, an archer of Meudon was condemned for many robberies, and especially for robbing the church at Meudon, to be hanged at Paris. He appealed to the Parlement which confirmed the sentence. Then the physicians and surgeons of the city represented to the king that many and divers persons were grievously molested and tormented by stone, colic, and pains in the side, with which the said archer was also much troubled, and that Monseigneur du Bouchaige (a favourite courtier mentioned by Comines) was sorely afflicted by the said maladies, and that it would be very useful to see the places where these maladies are concreted, and that this could be best done by vivisecting a human being, which 1I am indebted for part of the above to Roth's Andreas Vesalius Bruxellensis, Berlin, 1892, p. 473, etc., where the reader will find a more complete refutation of this calumny. could be well effected on the person of the said archer, who was also about to suffer death. Which opening and incision was accordingly done on the body of the said archer, and the place of the said maladies having been sought out and examined, his bowels were replaced and he was sown up again. And by the king's command the wound was very well dressed, so that he was perfectly healed within a fortnight, and he received a free pardon, and some money was given him as well." The effects of poisons and antidotes were very frequently tested upon condemned criminals, as is noticed in the text, and the following examples from Matthioli's notes to his edition of Dioscorides might be considerably added to if necessary. "In November, 1524, Pope Clement VII. ordered poison to be given to two condemned criminals in order to test the virtues of a wonderful oil invented by Gregory Caravita of Bologna, then my preceptor. Both received aconite; he who had taken the larger dose was rubbed with the oil and recovered after three days, though he had formidable symptoms; the other was left alone, and died miserably in a few hours, with all the symptoms, pains, and discomforts described by Avicenna." Matthioli then relates how he tested the same oil on a convict at Prague : "The man was delighted, for he said he would rather be poisoned in private, than hanged in public, and there was also the hope of escape. But he died in spite of the oil, and his face turned as blue as though he had been hanged. I also gave a drachm of aconitum napellus to a strong young robber, aged twenty-seven, in order to try the virtue of the bezoar stone of the Arabs. He said the poison tasted like pepper." Matthioli then gave him 7 grains of bezoar stone in wine, and after seven hours of very unpleasant symptoms, which are minutely described, he recovered. NOTES. For the supposed vivisection at Pisa see Andreozzi, Le Leggi Penali degli Antichi Cinesi, Florence, 1878; Cobbe, Bernard's Martyrs, 1879, and a pamphlet, On the Vivisection of Men, signed F. P. C., 1892; Berdoe, Origin and Growth of the Healing Art, 1893, p. 373. The edict of Duke Cosmo is given in Fabroni, Historia Academiæ Pisanæ, Pisa, 1791 (1-70). I have omitted a few immaterial sentences for the sake of brevity. The Bezoar stone is a concretion found in the intestines of various HUMAN VIVISECTION. 417 ruminant animals, especially the Bezoar goat (Capra aegagrus). It was introduced into medicine by the Arabs as a universal antidote. Ambrose Paré (Des Venins, 44), relates how it was tested by command of Charles IX. on a condemned criminal against a dose of corrosive sublimative. As in, Matthioli's case the man was delighted, but he perished miserably; "so the king ordered the rest of the stone to be thrown into the fire, which was done". 66 In 763, Christinus, a renegade chief of Bulgarian brigands, was captured by the troops of Constantine V. 'Having cut off his hands and feet, they brought in physicians who incised him alive from thorax to pubes, to study the structure of man; and so they burnt him." Theophanes, Chronographia, A.M., 6256; Paulus Diaconus, Historia Miscella, xxii. Here the vivisection seems to have been punitive rather than scientific, like the later drawing and quartering of traitors, but it was probably easier in that age to dissect a live apostate than a dead Christian. |