Matthew of Gradi, or De Gradibus, was the first, according to
Professor Turner in his article on Anatomy in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, who represented the ovaries in the correct light as
regards their anatomical relations and their function.

The most important of these fifteenth century investigators in pure
anatomy, however, is Berengarius or Berengar of Carpi, who did his
work at Bologna at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the
sixteenth {82} century. His commentaries on Mondino's work show how
much he added to that great teacher's instruction. If he had no other
distinction than that of having been the first to undertake a
systematic view of the several textures of which the body is composed,
it would have been sufficient to stamp him as a great original worker
in anatomy. He treats successively of the anatomical characters and
properties of fat, of membrane in general, of flesh, of nerve, of
villus or fibre, of ligament, of sinew or tendon, and of muscle in
general. Almost needless to say, he must have made many dissections to
obtain such clear details of information, and, as we shall see, he
probably did make many hundreds. If he had done nothing else but be
the first to mention the vermiform appendix, it would have been quite
sufficient to give him a distinction in our day. Everything that he
touched, however, he illuminated. His anatomy of the fetus was
excellent. He was the first to note that the chest of the male was
larger than in the female, while the capacity of the female pelvis was
in the opposite ratio. In the larynx he discovered the two arytenoid
cartilages. He recognized the opening of the common biliary duct, and
was the first to give a good description of the thymus gland. All
this, it must be remembered, before the end of the second decade of
the sixteenth century, that is, almost before Vesalius was born.

Berengar's work was done at Bologna. Some five years before his death
Bologna became a Papal city. There is no sign, however, that this
change in the political fortunes of the city made any difference in
Berengar's application to his favorite studies in anatomy. As we shall
see in the chapter on The Papal Medical School, already the Popes were
laying the foundations {83} of their own great medical school in Rome,
in which anatomy was to be cultivated above all the other sciences, so
that there would be no reason to expect from other sources of
historical knowledge any interrupt