Anna Morandi: anatomist of Enlightenment Bologna

Abstract

It is a surprise to find that one of the few women celebrated for her medical expertise before the modern era was not a midwife or a herbalist but an anatomist, used to rolling up her sleeves in the stench and gore of the dissecting room and calmly demonstrating to medical students. The status of Anna Morandi (1714–74) is complicated by her concurrent role as an artist: she was one of the pre-eminent creators of accurate wax models of tissues and organs. Women making medical history: introducing A Woman's PlaceIn December, 2017, The Lancet issued a call for papers for its special theme issue on women in science, medicine, and global health .1 The Comment outlined the gender inequalities in medicine that still persist, long after many overt barriers to women's participation have fallen. While that theme issue will be forward-looking, I believe we can also gain insights from looking to the past for examples of women who have made their mark against the odds, and by asking what it was about their particular circumstances that enabled them to do so. Full-Text PDF Anna Morandi's successorsMuch to our delight, we read Georgina Ferry's Perspective (Aug 4, 2018, p 375)1 about the anatomist Anna Morandi. Choosing an anatomist for the first special theme issue on women in science, medicine, and global health seemed logical because anatomy, especially in its modern form, remains an essential pillar of medicine.1 In 2014, 240 years after Morandi's death, the biography1 connected the two underlying women, a scientist and an artist—two skills this pioneer of anatomy combined to perfection. Full-Text PDF