Alessandra Giliani was born in 1307 and died on 26 March 1326, in a blazing inferno at age 19. She was an Italian anatomist, serving as the first female prosector

Prosector

A prosector is a person with the special task of preparing a dissection for demonstration, usually in medical schools or hospitals. Many important anatomists began their careers as prosectors working for lecturers and demonstrators in anatomy and pathology....

 (preparer of dissections for anatomical study) in Italy.

She was the surgical assistant to Mondino De' Luzzi (d. 1326), professor of medicine at the University of Bologna

University of Bologna

The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

 who published a seminal anatomy handbook in 1316. She developed a method of draining the blood from a corpse and replacing it with a hardening coloured dye, thus allowing the smallest blood vessel

Blood vessel

The blood vessels are the part of the circulatory system that transports blood throughout the body. There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and...

s to be seen with ease.

Alessandra Giliani's short life was honoured by Otto Angenius, also one of Mondino's assistants and probably her fiance, with a plaque at the Church of San Pietro e Marcellino in Rome which describes her work.

She is mentioned by the nineteenth-century historian Michele Medici, who published a history of the Bolognese school of anatomy in 1857.

The Barbara Quick book The Golden Web, published by Harper Teen Press, is a fictional biography of Alessandra.