excellent conditions that he
accepted it. It is another case of the Popes being not only willing
and even anxious, but also able because of their position, to secure
the best talent available for their medical school at the Roman
University.

Undoubtedly one of the greatest members of the faculty that the Papal
Medical School ever had is Lancisi, one of the supreme medical
teachers of history, who is usually considered one of the founders of
modern clinical medicine. When at the beginning of the eighteenth
century Boerhaave attracted the attention of the world by his bedside
teaching of medicine at Leyden, there were two occupants of thrones in
Europe who proved to have particular interest in this new departure.
They were perhaps the last two who might ordinarily be expected to
have much use for such improvements in medical education. One of them
was the Empress Maria Theresa, of Austria, whose patronage of
Boerhaave 's pupil, Van Swieten, secured the establishment of that
system of clinical teaching which has since made the Vienna Medical
School famous. The other was the Pope. With his approbation Lancisi
established clinical teaching at Rome, and thus did much to maintain
at Rome a great center of medical progress during the eighteenth
century.

Lancisi was graduated at the Sapienza, the Roman University, at the
early age of eighteen. When only twenty-two he became assistant
physician at the Santo Spirito Hospital and began to show the first
hint of the brilliant genius he was to display later in life.

Some ten years later, as the result of a competitive examination which
still further demonstrated his talents, he was chosen Professor of
Anatomy in his Alma Mater, {242} the Sapienza. He was only
thirty-three at the time, and the fact that he should be chosen shows
that the Papal University was ready to take advantage of talent
wherever it found it and did not allow itself to be won only by
notoriety at a distance. The excellence of the choice was demonstrated
before long by Lancisi's brilliant career as a teacher and an original
investigator. Some of the most distinguished medical men from all over
the world came to listen to his lectures (according to Hirsch's
Biographical Lexicon of the Most Prominent Physicians of All Times and
Peoples), and even Malpighi and Tozzi, the Papal physicians during the
time, were among his auditors. [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: Most of these details are taken from Hirsch's
Biogra