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Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man

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Leonardo da Vinci was a polymath that applied his genius to many fields, one of which was anatomy. During 1510-11, while at the medical school of the University of Pavia, the local authorities gave him permission to dissect the body of an elderly man with the purpose of creating accurate drawings of internal organs, muscles, and bones. Many of those drawings are now collected in what is called "Anatomical Manuscript A" owned by The Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The book by Clayton and Phylo contains about thirty of Leonardo's drawings each of which appears twice, the original version with the left-hand written notes of Leonardo and a version with the notes translated into English. One of the most impressive drawings is Folio 8V showing the vertebral column with all its tiny details. Leonardo's comments about the size, shape, and position of each vertebra testify how deeply he immersed himself into the study of the human body. Unfortunately, at that time, his drawings were not made available to other scholars with the result that the development of anatomy, and hence medicine, suffered a delay of about one century or so. A book that nicely complements "The Mechanics of Man" is the 1983 republication of O'Malley and Saunders' "Leonardo on the Human Body" (1952) which contains 1200 anatomical drawings with Leonardo's notes fully translated into English.