Two hundred years of the Anatomia universa of Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815): a milestone in the history of medicine and an innovative and modern approach to medical education

Abstract

Two hundred years ago, the first of the nine volumes of Paolo Mascagni’s Anatomia universa was published posthumously. This work was the fruit of a project that had occupied Mascagni for most of his life: an Atlas of anatomy that was the perfect replica on paper of dissection, a fundamental part of the teaching of this discipline. Through a short journey that traces some of the most important passages in the life of the great anatomist, the authors commemorate the Anatomia universa, an extraordinary work in the history and teaching of medicine. To do so, they draw on information and recover evocative Anatomical plates that are still conserved intact today in the prestigious Museum of Siena. The plates are organized to reveal the body from the superficial muscle layer down to the skeleton, as in the process of dissection. For the first time in the history of anatomy, the plates were life-size. Furthermore, in an original manner, and again for the first time, these plates showed the network of lymphatic vessels that Mascagni had brought to light a few years earlier. The beauty and perfection of these drawings are the result of Mascagni’s knowledge and his ability to recruit the most expert artists and engravers of the time. Mascagni’s treatises testify to the modernity of his approach to medical education, and his deep conviction that the main objective was to educate young people and to enable them to acquire the most perfect knowledge of the structure of the human body.