Today is the 510th birthday of Guillame Rondelet.

His theater in Montpellier, France, was part of France’s oldest medical school, where the cutting-edge science of anatomy was practiced for public consumption.
Rondelet and his contemporaries hoped that anatomy would lead to new knowledge which would help create a better, healthier world.
 The practice of publicly viewing dissections stretches as far back as 1493, according to historian William Brockbank writing in the journal Medical History. Then, an Italian physician named Alexander Benedetti wrote that “there must be guards to restrain the eager public as it enters,” and two people should stand at the door to take entry fees. “The outstanding personalities and authorities of the town were invited to be present.”
 Renaissance anatomical dissections had a number of theatrical elements, according to historian Giovanna Ferrari writing for the journal Past & Present: beyond the fact that the places where they were held were called dissecting theaters, spectators had to buy a ticket to enter. Inside, they could expect to hear a musical performance while watching the show, a dissection that had been carefully choreographed and included a number of different roles, from dissector to assistants, who Benedetti wrote “must not mind horrors or faint in the presence of a corpse.”
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