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How Accurate Were Leonardo Da Vinci's Anatomy Drawings?
antdude writes "BBC News answers how accurate were Leonardo da Vinci's anatomy drawings — 'During his lifetime, Leonardo made thousands of pages of notes and drawings on the human body. He wanted to understand how the body was composed and how it worked. But at his death in 1519, his great treatise on the body was incomplete and his scientific papers were unpublished. Based on what survives, clinical anatomists believe that Leonardo's anatomical work was hundreds of years ahead of its time, and in some respects it can still help us understand the body today. So how do these drawings, sketched more than 500 years ago, compare to what digital imaging technology can tell us today?'"
The biggest insight I gleaned from the article was when the author described da Vinci's approach to anatomy as being that of an engineer's and an architect, and how that perspective allowed him to interpret the body structures he saw. Remember high school biology dissection labs? Or if you studied anatomy in college, remember the profound disconnect between seeing a perfectly laid-out diagram of an organism, versus actually going in and dissecting one in reality? You think that when you cut a creature open, that you'll see some version of those drawings just sitting there in front of you, labeled and color-coded and all structures clearly defined. Instead, I acutely remember my surprise when cutting open a rat, a frog, and an earthworm, that all I really saw at first was a jumbled pink/brown mess of innards. Things moved around, didn't have the shape I thought they would, and if someone hadn't already drawn the diagrams I would've been at a complete loss as to how to describe what I saw, let alone try to make an anatomically faithful reproduction of it.
That should give you a better understanding of just how amazing da Vinci's observational skills were.
Kinky is using a feather, perverted is using the whole bird. Playing it safe is using a rubber chicken.
I hate that fucking show, oh it was fine for a couple seasons but now were seeing dead boyfriends and supernatural experiences blah blah blah bullshit
Agreed, but she was talking about the 19th century editions of Gray's Anatomy.
Which is a new spin-off, taking place in a Victorian steam punk universe : They use morphine for almost any operation, but only if they like the patient, sniff cocaine to get rid of the cold, and discuss female hysteria in the break room. Oh and the dresses, you should see the dresses.
Irrespective of their quality, Da Vinci's drawings did little at the time to challenge the use of Galen's work (which was based on dissection of animals and therefore quite inaccurate). That particular bit of heavy lifting was done by Andreas Vesalius, who not only debunked Galen, but was also the first to publish a comprehensive work on anatomy (De Humani Corporis Fabrica). His work has repeatedly been found to be highly accurate, especially considering the conditions under which it was produced. An amusing side note is that it was so well regarded it was extensively pirated.
;) since Galen studied it.
Vesalius made a lot of enemies by going against what amounted to the medical establishment of the time. After repeated challenges his critics actually resorted to the howler that the human body must have changed (evolved?
Vesalius has always been a personal hero of mine - a guy who developed an interest in an an important area (anatomy), and pursued it, at great personal cost, with as much thoroughness and rigor as could be had at the time.
Actually due to religious beliefs at the time if he was caught dissecting corpses he would have been imprisoned and most likely executed. So his research was done at much peril.
"Don't Panic!"
I imagine if a doctor went around digging up bodies without permission and dissecting them, he would be imprisioned even today.
Or he just cut up a lot of dead bodies to get the dimensions right.
It's not as easy as you think. Think of spaghetti code made flesh: Spaghetti nerves, spaghetti arteries, veins everywhere... And then there are the variations. No two bodies are wired exactly the same, especially after they've been cut open. Even with modern references and anatomy books, it takes a lot of studying to make sense of a cadaver.
The summary exaggerates a bit by implying we can still learn anatomy from Leonardo's sketches. Sure, they're prettier than the sketches adorning the walls of my dorm room (I'm a medical student) but they're nowhere near as accurate as, say, Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy. Leonardo had a lot of systems wrong, especially where female anatomy was concerned. His work was amazing for its time, but we've done much better since then.