ABSTRACT
Drawing above all on manuscript student notes, this chapter starts with an overview of Falloppia’s anatomical lectures and demonstrations and highlights his frequent references to the uses of anatomical knowledge for the understanding of diseases. It discusses and rejects the claims of numerous writers that Falloppia performed experiments or even vivisections on the men and women who had been sentenced to death and were brought to Pisa to be dissected. It does show, however, that Falloppia, by his own admission, gave at least nine of them deadly doses of opium to kill them and to dissect them afterward, and it seeks to understand how this could seem legitimate and morally justified from a contemporary viewpoint. The second part of the chapter presents Falloppia’s major anatomical findings and discoveries, discusses questions of priority, and looks at his relationship with Vesalius. In conclusion, it uses student notes to highlight the degree to which Falloppia dissected animals not only for practical reasons but to show how the same organ or part could assume a very different form and shape in different animals in order to achieve the same purpose.
