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MEDICAL TEACHING IN ROME. 103
of teaching, but human skeletons or prepared bones were
used also. May we not assume that in many cases models
formed of marble were employed for this purpose ? The
Vatican museums possess three of such carvings. Two of
these represent the bony thorax: one appears as whenopened,
and affords a view of the heart, the lungs, and the
diaphragm, with indications of the liver and intestines.
The third copy also exhibits the heart and both lungs."*
WELCKER doubts whether these were applied to medical
teaching and thinks merely that "the rare spectacle of a
chest laid open, of a thorax stripped of all flesh, which the
butcheries of the gladiators and the execution of criminals
gave the doctors, at times, opportunities of witnessing;
coupled with the peculiar tendency of many Roman
sculptors to copy realistically anything they met with,
often without any artistic feeling or taste, were the
associated conditions which led to the preparation of these
carvings."f The imitations of mummified human bodies,
brought forward at feasts for the purpose of inciting! the
guests to enjoy life can be as little noticed here as can the
numerous representations of the inhabitants of the kingdom
of Death which have been handed down to us on tombs,
on gems, and in bronze: for they stood in no kind of
relation to anatomical teaching.§ So too the figure used
by BLUMENBACH as the title-page vignette of his
"Geschichte und Beschreibung der Knochen (Gottingen
1786) " , which was taken from an ancient cornelian and
represents a bearded elderly man, grasping with his left
haild a human skeleton erect before him, points rather
* EM. BRAUM in the Bullet, dell'instituto archeol., Roma 1844, p. 16, 19.—
J. M. CHARCOT and A. DECHAMBRE: De quelques marbres antiques concern.
des e'tudes anatomiques in the Gaz. hebd. de me'd. et de chir., Paris 1857, T.
iv. No. 23, 27, 30 (where too the so-called ^Esop of the Villa Albani in Rome is
mentioned).
t F. G. WELCKER : Kleine Schriften, Bd. iii, S. 223.
X PETRONIUS: Satyr., c. 34.
§ G. E. LESSING: Wie die Alten den Tod abgebildet haben.— J. M. F. v.
OLFERS : Uber ein Grab bei Kumse in den Abhandlungen der Akad. d.
Wiss., Berlin 1830.