The anatomical collections of the second half of XVIIIth century in the Universities of Padua, Modena and Pavia

In 1772 duke Francesco III d'Este promoted the reform of University enacting the Constitutions for the University of Modena, which envisaged the creation of a Magistrate for the studies. In the same year Antonio Scarpa was charged of teaching anatomy and surgery: he was twenty-five years old and graduated at the University of Padua. Scarpa’s lessons of anatomy used to take place at the Civic Hospital of Sant’Agostino - which had been built between 1753 and 1758 thanks to duke Francesco III – in a small room at the ground floor.At the end of November 1773 - beginning of the new academic year – the Opera Pia Generale, responsible of the Civic Hospital Sant’Agostino, after an inspection within the enclosure of the St. Agostino Hospital, stated that an anatomical theatre will be built in the neighbourhood of the Hospital as agreed with professor Scarpa. It should have been built where the church of San Nicolò was. The master builder Lorenzo Toschi was charged for drawing up the plan and the expertise, according to the instructions he would receive from Scarpa.Scarpa, in fact, asked to the modenese Girolamo Vandelli, professor of Surgical institutions at the University of Padua, to send the Secretary of State Ippolito Bagnesi the model of the anatomical theater built by Fabrizio Acquapendente for the University of Padua. Two other models were then created, one of them by the engineer Lodovico Bolognini and the other based on a drawing by Lorenzo Toschi and coloured by Luigi Putini .The Presidents of the Opera Pia chose the last project, which was the less expensive.The anatomical theatre was officially opened on January 23rd 1775: it was shaped like an extended elliptical amphitheatre, perpendicular to the entrance, but not as high and as narrow as the anatomical theatre of Padua. Moreover it had larger stands and was furnished – at least in part – with benches (Favaro, 1932), and could host up to 400 persons. Laboratories were annexed to the theatre hall, namely two rooms, a small room and four other rooms and the entrance in the front porch with nine arches, four of which are now closed.The main entrance to the anatomical theatre was inside the block of S. Agostino Hospital; a second access was to be in front of Piazza d'Armi (at present, Piazza Novi Sad).On December 11th 1775, at the beginning of the following academic year, Scarpa delivered a learned speech and opened the new School of Obstetric Art, basing on the previous yeas experiences, like the one opened in Bologna nearly twenty years before by Giovanni Antonio Galli, and the one in Padua opened nearly ten years before by one of his teachers, Luigi CalzaThe School of Obstetrics had been supported by duke Francesco III Este who succeeded in getting the school equipped with the necessary instruments and wax preparations, as Scarpa himself asked; he also suggested to address to the young sculptor Giovan Battista Manfredini, who had already been working in Padua for prof. Calza. Moreover, following the example of his teacher, Scarpa created an anatomical cabinet in the laboratory on the left next to the anatomical theatre, in order to put there all the anatomical preparations, in particular those made of wax, which were made for lectures of obstetric surgeons and for the Midwives school.The two famous dissertations “De structura fenestrae rotundae, et de timpano secundario” and “Adnotationes necrologicae” are the result of the tireless studies of Scarpa during his first years of teaching at the University of Modena. They were printed in 1779 in Modena and were the basis for the creation of the wax preparations The inventory of 1788 – five years after Scarpa left Modena to go to Pavia – gives us evidence of how the anatomical cabinet was staged.A map of the floor of the cliniques and anatomical cabinet of nineteenth century, which referres back to the first half of XIX century, shows that the anatomical cabinet was placed in two rooms on the left of the entrance hall of the anatomical theatre. The “study of obstetrics” that Francesco Febbrari, graduated in Modena in 1773, orderd to the Bolognese Giovan Battista Manfredini under the supervision of Carlo Mondini, can be referred back to a commission of Scarpa. It was a series of obsteric models made of clay, which got to Modena after 1815, when the archiduke Francesco IV of Austria Este came back to Modena: the Estense government bought them from the widow of Febbrari, Angiola.The collection of obstetric sculptures, composed of eight female busts - two of which are without the skin, and two more are in advanced pregnancy - and thirty models of uterus; at present the collection is placed in a room next to the Anatomical Museum.In the windows of the fourth room of the anatomical musuem – realized in the first half of nineteenth century thanks to the will of the Este dukes – there are some of the wax preparations commissioned by Scarpa. Together with other preparations, they constituted in XIX century the Obstetric Museum which, until the end of last century, was next to the Obstetric Clinic