Alessandra Giliani

Alessandra Giliani is known as the first woman to be recorded in historical documents as practicing anatomy and pathology. She's reputed to have worked as a prosector, preparing corpses for anatomical study, under the famed anatomist Mondino de Luzzi at the University of Bologna; although all evidence of her work has been either lost or destroyed. Due to the lack of records on Giliani, a number of modern historians, such as Paula Findlan, argue that Giliani was invented by notorious forger and pseudo-historian Alessandro Macchiavelli in the 18th Century; indeed, doubts had been expressed as early as 1857 in Michele Medici's History of the Bolognese School of Anatomy. If real, however, Giliani's purported contributions to the study of anatomy would be significant.