Alessandro Benedetti

"[1] He later describes a postmortem examination of a woman who had died of syphilis and the disease's effects on her bones.

"[3] Benedetti valued personal observation over blind trust in the authorities and even, shockingly for the time, corrected Aristotle.

"Aristotle believes that the nerves first arise from the heart… but almost all of them (as is more evidently established) are perceived to originate in large part from the brain….

"[4] Medieval scholars preferred to trust the authorities over their own observations, while this new generation of anatomists increasingly valued experience over theory.

Living through the Italian Wars, he wrote a commentary on the Battle of Farnovo of 1495 as he was tending to the wounds of the injured, experiencing first hand the horrors of the battle, he mentioned "on every side the sky flashed repeatedly with fire and thundered with artillery ... and iron, bronze and lead hissed pass and the air was filled with wails and cries".