The human uterus has seven chambers or cells, with different chambers associated with male, female, or intersex fetuses.

The seven-chambered uterus is a striking example of a diagram surviving contact with the body it supposedly described.

In medieval learned anatomy, the uterus was sometimes divided into seven cells: three on the right for male fetuses, three on the left for female fetuses, and a central chamber associated with an intersex fetus. The doctrine is often linked to Michael Scot and the Salernitan tradition, though historians trace versions of it earlier.

What makes the story remarkable is Mondino de’ Liuzzi. His Anathomia became enormously influential in medieval anatomical teaching, and he had personally dissected female corpses in Bologna. Yet he still described seven uterine chambers. The inherited scheme was strong enough to shape the interpretation of what dissection revealed.

Renaissance anatomists gradually broke with it. Berengario da Carpi described a simple uterus, and Vesalius’s 1543 Fabrica gave a much more recognizable human reproductive anatomy.

The old seven-cell model mixed anatomy with theories about sex determination and bodily heat. Modern anatomy finds one principal uterine cavity, while chromosomal sex is established at fertilization. An embryo’s position in the uterus does not determine sex.

Because the doctrine’s origin and geographical spread are not cleanly bounded, this card is excluded from precise lifespan statistics.