Italian physician who marked the revival of medical practice in the West following the Dark Ages. Arabian and Persian doctors, the greatest of whom was Avicenna, had continued the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions, but their works remained in the framework of Greek medicine and did not produce new methodologies. Although Mondino de' Luzzi is historically important as one of the first physicians of note following the Dark Ages, his medical procedures were, in fact, a step backwards. He taught his students while seated on an elevated chair, and employed a barber surgeon to perform the actual dissections. He believed in dissecting from the inside out, since internal organs rot the most quickly. In the process, he inevitably destroyed parts of the body in the process. Furthermore, Mondino de' Luzzi blindly accepted Galen's anatomy, even when a simple dissection would have conclusively proven him to be at odds with actual observations. He wrote a compendium of anatomy, which was basically a guide for understanding Galen. This represented a regression from scientific procedures, and stands out in sharp distinction to Grosseteste's and Roger Bacon's extensive experimentation and questioning of established authorities which were being undertaken in approximately the same period. Unfortunately for medicine, as well as science at large, Mondino de' Luzzi's methods became standard practice in medical schools until they were eventually replaced by the sound observational and experimental practices of Vesalius.

Avicenna, Bacon (Roger), Galen, Grosseteste, Vesalius