Gentile da Foligno

He was among the first European physicians to perform a dissection on a human being (1341),[3][4] a practice that had long been taboo in Roman times.

Gentile wrote several widely copied and read texts and commentaries, notably his massive commentary covering all five books of the Canon of Medicine by the 11th-century Persian polymath Avicenna, the comprehensive encyclopedia that, in Latin translation, was fundamental to medieval medicine.

[6] A mark of the respect in which Gentile's work continued to be held, more than a century after his death, was the rapidity with which they appeared in print, from the Italian presses, beginning in the 1470s.

[7] Gentile's commentary de urinarum iudiciis makes a first attempt to comprehend the physiology of urine formation; aided by his dissection of cadavers, Gentile asserted that urine associated with the blood passes per poros euritides ("through the porous tubules") of the kidney and is then delivered to the bladder.

He prepared a widely read treatise on the Black Death, recommending theriac among other prophylaxis, but died of the plague himself.