Who was the more human: the great Napoleon when he gave the orders for those glorious and pointless bloodbaths, or Ptolemy when he gave the physician Herophilus more than six hundred criminals, already condemned to death, to be dissected alive, so that science should derive some benefit from their bodies – a science that over the centuries has served the lives of millions of men. Cosimo de’ Medici, a refined Florentine, did the same for the physician Fallopius. And was Fallopius, who carried out live experiments solely for love of science, any more barbarous than you, Herzfeld, or me, who for a discourteous word would run a man through, without scruple? […] You know that in order to depict Prometheus being torn to pieces by the vulture, Parrhasius bought an old and venerable prisoner, then had him brought to his studio and proceeded to slash his liver with a sharp blade, and while the old man died in atrocious agony, the unruffled artist observed, studied and painted.
CAMILLO BOITO — Senso and Other Stories, transl. by Christine Donougher, (2012)
