How Did Leonardo Da Vinci Influence The Study Of Anatomy

“Leonardo’s interest went beyond simple physiology, and he tried to understand the correlation between anatomic changes and diseases.” (Sterpetti) His desire to always go one step further and ask more questions is one of the contributing factors to all of his discoveries. He continued to study the human anatomy, even though he wasn’t technically allowed to do the autopsies, he still practiced them at night ( Sterpetti). Leonardo Da Vinci never had his works published for unknown reasons, but they were still believed to be very influential to many of the first anatomists, such as Andreas Vesalius who wrote De Humani Corporis Fabrica around twenty-four years after Leonardo Da Vinci’s death (O’Neill and Cone). Leonardo’s unpublished manuscripts
Many artists studied the superficial anatomy such as the musculature and skin of humans, this is why many people think leonardo began his dissections. The only way dissections were accepted were for artistic purposes. While Leonardo was in Florence they allowed him to perform human dissections, but while he was in Rome he wasn’t granted this special permission and was accused of being a sorcerer. The people who discovered him ended up destroying his lab (Sterpetti). While Da Vinci attempted to learn about the human anatomy he was in constant fear of overstepping and making the church angry. During this time the Roman Catholic church had copious amounts of power and influence over Italy. The church was always in fear of losing their power thus began the inquisition making it even harder for Leonardo to challenge the medical findings of his time. According to Amanda Cothern, “The extent to which Leonardo’s studies were taken exceeds any before them, even those conducted by physicians of the day” (Cothern). Despite all of the challenges he was having to face he still managed to making advanced discoveries for this point in time. In Antonio’s article he discusses how Leonardo’s
He accurately drew the first picture of the human spine (Sooke). Which at the time was an incredible discovery due to the fact that not many people dissected for medical purposes. Author Alastair Sooke stated that Da Vinci was also able to look at a liver and describe a disease known as cirrhosis of the liver. The author believes that if Leonardo were to have published his works he would be “... more important than the Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius.” (Sooke). Even if his works were never published Da Vinci has been equally as influential over the years due to his accuracy in his drawings and his knowledge of what the different diseases look like in the human body. Leonardo was one of the very first to challenge the thought that the heart only had two chambers. When Leonardo first became interested in the heart he began to study one from a cow. Interested in how the blood flowed through it, he created a cast of the cow’s heart using wax. Sterpetti, author of Anatomy and Physiology by Leonardo, talks about how Da Vinci made several wax casts of the heart and proceeded to make glass replicas. He then pumped water mixed with grass seeds through this model to observe how the water flowed through the veins and arteries (Sooke). Some of the discoveries he made weren’t proven to be true until hundreds of years later. This proves how ahead Leonardo was in his time. If these had been published