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CHAPTER III POSSIBLE LITERARY SOURCES OF LEONARDO’S ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE[edit]
{{McMurrich1930 header}}
In studying Leonardo’s manuscripts, one notes from time to time a drawing or sketch showing anatomical conditions that do not actually occur, but are representations of traditions handed down from earlier times and especially from Galen. These traditions had gained a strong foothold during the Middle Ages when observations were at a standstill, and even Leonardo, with all the keenness of observation and artistic accuracy shown in his anatomical studies, was yet strongly under the influence of Galen’s physiological theories, and occasionally endeavored to give them visual expression in a drawing. It is evident, then, that Leonardo was familiar with these traditions and it may be of interest to consider the possible sources from which he may have had knowledge of them. He was little affected by the literary Renaissance which w T as at its height in his day; the principles of the artistic Renaissance that he imbibed as an artist led him in his scientific studies past the methods of the humanists, past their reliance upon classical authority, to the modern methods of observation and deduction. He w T as, indeed, accused by the humanists of being unlettered, but replied that the things that interested him were revealed by experiment rather than by words, and he boasted experiment to have been his mistress in all things (CA, 119). Those who rely on authority in maintaining their opinions were, he claimed, exercising their memory rather than their judgment (CA, 76), and he held that all science that ends in words has death rather than life. He found much worthy of imitation in the works of antiquity, but, nevertheless, had nothing but condemnation for those who followed them servilely, when “the grandest of all books, I mean the Universe, stands open before our eyes.” “Those,” he said, “who study only the ancients and not the works of Nature are step-sons and not sons of Nature, the mother of all good authors” (CA, 141).
=Leonardo da Vinci - The Anatomist=


But while he thus condemned reliance upon authority, he did not disdain the works of his predecessors as guides or aids to observation and interpretation. As has been stated, Leonardo’s ideas as to the ultimate constitution of the body and his physiology were essentially those of the Galenic tradition, and one may assume that he did not start on his anatomical observations without some knowledge of the anatomy of the day. His distrust of the works of the ancients was not
==Chapter II Anatomy from Galen to Leonardo==


Since, then, a just estimate of Leonardo’s contribution to anatomy can only be arrived at when the state of that science in his day is understood, it will be advisable to consider the opportunities for anatomical studies available during the Middle Ages, the methods employed and the results.


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With the death of Galen at the end of the second century of our era, the study of Anatomy entered upon its dark days and for nearly thirteen centuries scarcely a single fact was added to the knowledge of the structure of the human body. Nor does this statement, strong as it is, sufficiently express the condition of anatomical knowledge during this long period; not only was there no progress, there was retrogression. Throughout the Byzantine period synopses of Galen satisfied all demands, the most celebrated being the Collecta medicinalia of Oribasius, compiled at the request of the Emperor Julian and setting forth in concise and orderly succession the statements of the garrulous Galen. Theophilus Protospatharius in the seventh century does seem to have interested himself in dissection and to have added slightly to anatomical knowledge, but such activity was exceptional; and while the period produced some works of importance in the history of medicine and surgery, as far as anatomy was concerned it was almost barren. Later, in Europe the feudalism of the Middle Ages suppressed personal initiative among the mass of the people, each man’s actions and behavior being dictated by the behests of his feudal lord; and among the clerics, from whom light might have been expected, the dogmas of the Church, formluated by the great Councils of the fifth and sixth centuries, defined within narrow limits the mode of thought. Life in all its aspects became highly conventionalized; feudalism produced such conventionalisms as knight-errantry, trial by combat, courts of love and, the climax of them all, the science of Heraldry; philosophy became conventionalized into rhetorical contests between Realists and Nominalists; and art, employed almost exclusively for religious instruction, became stereotyped into the stiff expressionless forms characteristic of early Christian paintings.


Conventionalism is dogmatism crystallized, and dogmatism means finality. What wonder then that the formulation of Christian theology, with its attendant sectarian bitterness, persecutions, riots, and even massacres, resulted in a belief that the last word had been spoken on matters theological. The essence of that theology was absolute faith in the dogmas of the Church ; faith and not reason was the foundation of knowledge of both the supernatural and natural worlds, and of the two worlds it was the supernatural that held the chief place in men’s minds. For their knowledge of natural phenomena they were content to rely upon the statements contained in the writings of the Fathers, these statements in turn being based upon those of earlier writers, provided that these did not conflict with the patristic interpretation of the Scriptures. The character of mediaeval philosophy has been aptly stated in these words:


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“A reversed pyramid, whose base was occupied by spiritual matters and of which the imperceptible point of the apex was constituted by man and nature, as things transitory and fleeting — that is the symbol of mediaeval doctrine.” (Solmi, 1910.)


Under such circumstances there was naturally no incitement to personal observation, and experiment and science languished. It became conventionalized largely according to the Galenic tradition, and this tradition came to possess a finality; it was complete and unassailable, there was nothing to be added to it and nothing to be corrected. The word tradition is used advisedly because during the middle ages the original Galen had become practically unknown. Except in Constantinople and probably in such centers as Salerno and Montpellier, Greek had become to all intents a dead language, and Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen were known only through tradition that had filtered down from the past. Fortunately the works of these authors were not destined for oblivion; they were saved to the World and restored to Europe through the appreciation by the Arabs of what was best in the philosophy and science of the Greeks.


LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ANATOMIST
The role of the Arabs in the history of the intellectual development of Europe was an interesting one. Primarily a pastoral and more or or less nomadic people, divided by intertribal feuds, they were welded into a nation by the religious enthusiasm of Mahomet and his small band of early converts, and, after a remarkable career of conquest, they settled down in their capitals to cultivate the arts of peace, just as the Ptolemies had done centuries before in Alexandria. Bagdad and Cordova became centers of learning in which Arabian sages studied and expounded the wisdom of the Greeks. But the Arabs had no knowledge of the Greek tongue and their first care was to secure the services of Syrians, Jews and Nestorian Christians to translate into Arabic the works whose contents they desired to master, and it was not long before all the important scientific and philosophical treatises of classical times appeared in an Arabic guise. From these translations as a source, there flowed a stream of abstracts, commentaries and treatises by Arabian authors, which, however, added little to the volume of human knowledge. For the Arabs showed little originality; what they handed on was Greek science and philosophy with, it is true, some oriental color in its presentation and application, but still essentially Greek. The Arabs contributed little, but they were the keepers of the Light through the Dark Ages and they restored it to the Western world where it had become well-nigh extinct.


The activities of the Arabian commentators could not indefinitely remain unknown to the scholars of western Europe. Already in the latter half of the eleventh century Constantinus Africanus, after spending forty years of his life among the Arabs, was received into the Monastery of Monte Cassino, not far from Salerno, and interested himself in the translation into Latin of Arabic versions of Galen’s Ars parva and Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, as well as of treatises by Ali Abbas and other Arabian commentators of less renown. The capture of Toledo from the Moors by Alfonso VI in 1085 also revealed to the Christian conquerors something of the wealth of the Arabic literature and awakened desire for a better acquaintance with the wisdom of the Arabs. But it was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that Arabian influence became most pronounced in Europe. In the twelfth century Toledo became the seat of a bureau of translation organized by the Archbishop Raymond and in the thirteenth century the capture by the Christians of such cities as Cordova and Seville brought further treasures into the hands of the conquerors. Especially under Alfonso X, surnamed The Wise, earnest attempts were made to utilize these treasures to the full; the observations of the Arabian astronomers were collated to form the Alfonsine Tables, while the work of translation went on apace.


of the works themselves, but of an implicit reliance upon them which could serve only as a bar to progress. His desire was to prove by observation the teachings of his predecessors, but when he found observation and tradition at variance, he promptly accepted the results of observation.
But not only were the conditions in Spain favorable for the dissemination of Arabian learning, circumstances made Italy at this same time especially ready for its reception. The Hohenstaufen rulers of Sicily and Naples were strongly biased in favor of the eastern customs and their courts were oriental rather than occidental in their ceremonials. This was especially true in the case of Frederick II, who, notwithstanding that he was under the ban of the Church, led a crusade to the Holy Land and gained important concessions from the Sultan of Jerusalem, with whom he swore a blood-brotherhood. In 1241, Frederick promulgated an edict setting forth the requirements necessary for a license to practice medicine and surgery within his dominions, these requirements demanding that the candidate should have studied the science of logic for at least three years and thereafter should have pursued the study of medicine for five years and have practiced for one year under the guidance of a reputable physician, after which he must satisfy the masters at Salerno of his fitness by satisfactorily undergoing a public examination chiefly on the works of Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna. It is evident that at this time Arabistic medicine was thoroughly established at Salerno, then at the height of its renown as a center for medical training, but soon to give place to the younger universities of Montpellier and Bologna.


There are two ways by which indications of these sources may be obtained; firstly, by noting the authors mentioned in the manuscripts and, secondly, by studying Leonardo’s anatomical nomenclature. The first of these methods suffers from the disadvantages that in Leonardo’s day accurate reference and quotation had not come to be regarded with the reverence bestowed on them today, and, furthermore, one has to deal with Leonardo’s note-books and not with a completed and explicit treatise. Consequently such references as occur are, as a rule, of the briefest, a mere mention of a name it may be; and citations, when made, are not always accurate and in some cases are difficult to verify.
In these, too, Arabian influences became predominant in the thirteenth century. Arnald de Villanova, probably a Spaniard and familiar with both Greek and Arabic, came to Montpellier toward the end of the century, and by his learning, originality and independence contributed greatly to the overthrow of the scholastic methods and to the substitution therefor of the forgotten precepts of the ancient masters, preserved and elaborated by Rhazes and Avicenna. Indeed, he was more than an Arabist; like his contemporary Roger Bacon he advocated and practised observation and experiment as the sources of scientific knowledge, thereby gaining for himself, as did Bacon, reputation as an exponent of the Black Art. His alchemistic predilections did not, however, lead him into mysticism, and his skill as a physician gave an authority to his appreciation of the Arabian contributions to medicine and found a reflection in the compendiums and commentaries of Arabian medical writers that came from representatives of the Montpellier school during the fourteenth century.


The favorite treatise on anatomy in Leonardo’s time was the Anathomia of Mondino di Luzzi, which custom in Italy had prescribed as the guide in the performance of an Anatomy. Mondino was professor at Bologna and an Arabist, and although he refers to dissections that he himself had performed, his book is mainly founded on the anatomy of the Meliki of Albucasis and the Canon of Avicenna.
The University of Bologna primarily possessed but two faculties, those of Arts and Law, each with its own rector, and although it seems probable that medicine was taught there as early as the eleventh century, it was not until 1260 that the teaching of Thaddeus Alderotti, commonly known as Thaddeus Florentinus, began to attract students in considerable number, and in 1306 the Medical faculty was given an independent rector. Thaddeus was well versed in the medical lore of his day, both Greek and Arabic, and he and his pupils added to the list of commentaries on the works of the ancient and more recent writers. Of these works those chiefly studied by the students were, as at Salerno, the Ars parva of Galen and the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, but acquaintance w r as also required with other works of those authors and with the Colliget of Averrhoes, the Canon of Avicenna and the Almansor of Rhazes. (Rashdall.)


Leonardo mentions Mondino in two passages and evidently refers to him in a third, and it is noteworthy that he mentions him only to criticize. In one passage (QI, 12) it is objected that if, as Mondino asserted, the testes secrete a saliva-like fluid and not sperm, then there is no reason why the spermatic vessels should have the same origins in the male and female. In a second passage (AnA, 18) he disputes a statement that he attributes to Mondino, to the effect that the muscles that raise the toes are located in the outer part of the thigh (coscia) and that there are no muscles on the dorsum of the foot. But, as Roth (1907) has suggested, he must either have quoted from memory or else from an inaccurate manuscript, for what Mondino taught was that the tendons that extend the digits of the foot arise from muscles that are in the outer part of the crus (in tibia in parte silvestri), not the thigh, since the dorsum of the foot ought to be destitute of flesh, lest its weight be increased. It was the latter part of Mondino’s statement, however, that interested Leonardo, for he proceeds to direct attention to the extensor digitorum brevis which was apparently unknown to Mondino, although it had been described long before by Galen. Leonardo states in connection with a drawing —
In the thirteenth century, accordingly, the three great medical schools of Europe were deeply under the influence of Arabian authors, and while these restored a better knowledge of the Greeks, they also imposed limitations, since that knowledge came bound by the restrictions imposed by Arab custom. Chief among the results of these restrictions was the divorce of medicine and surgery, which was so pronounced during the Middle Ages. It was due in part to the influence of the oriental tradition against the use of the knife and in part to the general attitude inculcated by Scholasticism. Medicine lent itself more readily to the dialectic dear to the Scholastic, to argumentation as to causes, principles and treatment; whereas surgery required prompt and effective action, and in the foundation of the Universities it was medicine that was taught and practised by the Faculties of Medicine, and surgery was largely left in the hands of barbers, bathkeepers and even public executioners. There were, it is true, some learned surgeons, such as Theodoric and William of Saliceto of Bologna, Lanfranchi and de Monde ville of Paris and Guy de Chauliac of Montpellier, but their number was small and for the most part the physician deemed it beneath his dignity to undertake the treatment of wounds or fractures or operations such as couching and lithotomy, to say nothing of bleeding and tooth extraction. For the physician an intimate knowledge of anatomy was unnecessary; if he knew the position of the various organs of the body and their presumed functions he had all he required, and this he could obtain from a translation of an Arabic summary of Galen’s anatomical treatises, such as is found in Avicenna’s Canon. Ihe original treatises, and especially the de administrationibus anatomicis, remained neglected, even though an Arabic translation of the latter had been made by Honein (Johannitius) or his son-in-law Ilobeisch as early as the ninth century. It was translations of Arabic versions of the Ars medica (commonly known to the Arabists as the Microtechne) and the Methodus medendi {Megalechne) that were especially studied during the Middle Ages: and while the de usu partium awakened some interest for Galen’s anatomical treatises, the summation of the anatomical knowledge of his day, the learned physician felt no need and the barber-surgeon was too ignorant to make use of them.


“Experience shows that the muscles a, b, c, d (the extensor digitorum brevis ) move the second pieces of the bone of the digits and the muscles r, s, t, ( extensor communis digitorum and ext. longus hallucis ) move the ends of the digits. There is need to enquire why all do not arise in the foot or all in the leg.”
So the study of anatomy became conventionalized into the reading of a translation into Latin of an imperfect summary by an Arab of Galen’s teaching, and, since its source was Galen, the complete submission to the dictates of antiquity that characterized the Middle Ages gave it an authority and finality that well-nigh suppressed all stimulus to further inquiry. Indeed, ignorance of the original treatises concealed the fact that Galen’s contributions to anatomy were based on the dissection of animals, chiefly monkeys, that his anatomy was not in reality human anatomy, and when this fact was revealed by the investigations of Vesaiius in the sixteenth century their unshaken confidence in the infallibility of Galen led at least one of the Galenists to the conclusion that the structure of the human body mast have altered materially in some respects during the centuries that had elapsed since Galen’s day.


But notwithstanding the profound subservience to dogma, the faint flicker of revolt against it shown by such men as Roger Bacon and Arnald de Yillanova was not entirely extinguished, for the thirteenth century witnessed the encouragement of the study of anatomy by direct observation, such as had not been given since the days of Galen. The Emperor Frederick II, when prescribing the course of study to be pursued by those wishing to practice medicine within his dominions, enacted that no surgeon should be allowed to practise unless “Above all he has learned the anatomy of the human body at the medical school and is fully equipped in this department of medicine, without which neither operations of any kind can be undertaken with success, nor fractures be properly treated.” 1 This does not necessarily mean that the prospective surgeon must have learned his anatomy by the actual dissection of a human body; the School of Salerno was indeed noted for its interest in practical instruction in medicine, but there is no record of a dissection of a human body having been performed under its auspices. Toward the close of the eleventh century, at the period when Arabic influences were beginning to supplant the Greek tradition that had persisted in the School, one Copho, a member of that school, wrote a brief treatise on the anatomy of the pig, Anatomia porci , 2 consisting in its printed form of about two and a half pages and amounting to little more than an enumeration of the various organs to be seen in opening the body of the animal. It describes an autopsy rather than a dissection, but is of interest as evidencing some appreciation of the importance of a knowledge of anatomy based on personal observation. Somewhat more detailed was the Demonstratio anatomica by an anonymous author of the same school, also based on the autopsy of a pig, but these early attempts of the Salernitans to revive the practical study of anatomy were destined to be supplanted by treatises based on the study of the human body, the first attempts in this direction of which there is record, since the days of the Alexandrian anatomists.


sources of Leonardo’s anatomical knowledge 23
It is to Bologna that the credit for the revival of practical human anatomy is due, and it is interesting to note that the long-continued repugnance to the dissection of human cadavers was only gradually overcome by the desire for a more definite knowledge of the pathological changes produced by disease or by the demands of justice for definite evidence in cases of suspected poisoning. The first instance on record of such a revival was a legal autopsy performed by the Bolognese surgeon William of Saliceto on the body of the nephew of the Marchese Uberto Pallavicino, who was suspected of having died from the administration of poison. William of Saliceto was the author of a Cyrurgia, written in 1275, the fourth book of which is devoted to a compendium of Anatomy in five chapters. It is Galenic anatomy, similar to that found in mediaeval manuscripts, and, to judge from the use of Arabic terms for certain parts, was based upon an Arabic source, probably Avicenna. That William, “qui Gulielmina dicitur,”


In a third passage (AnA, 17) Leonardo evidently refers to the same statement, without, however, mentioning Mondino, and this time directs his criticism to the supposed origin of the extensors of the toes in the thigh.


“For” he says “if the thigh be squeezed a little above the knee and the toes be moved up and down you will feel no movement in the tendons or muscles of the thigh.”
1 J. J. Walsh, Mediaeval Medicine, London, 1920. The translation is made from a copy of the edict published in Huillard-Brehollis’ Diplomatic History of Frederick II, with Documents, Paris, 1851-1861.


Mondino’s Anathomia was written in 1316 and for a century and a half, until the invention of printing, numbers of manuscript copies of it must have been made and disseminated widely throughout Italy and possibly Germany. The first printed editions were published at Pavia and Bologna in 1478, and from that date onward until 1580 edition rapidly succeeded edition. What edition or editions may have served as Leonardo’s guide in beginning his anatomical studies, it is impossible to say with any certainty; he may have used a manuscript copy. But there is one piece of evidence that suggests a possibility that he may have been familiar with the edition that was published at Bologna in 1482, re-published in 1484 and later included in Ketham’s Fasciculus Medicinx, published in Venice in 1495. This edition was edited ab eximio artium et medicinx doctore magistro Petro Andrea Morsiano da Ymola in almo studio Bononix cyrurgiam legente, who also edited the Chirurgia of Avicenna in 1482 and, according to Roth (1907) is credited with having performed an anatomy at Bologna in 1499. On the verso of the cover of manuscript G, mention is made of one Andrea da Imola, not, however, in connection with matters anatomical, but with regard to his objection to Leonardo’s theory as to the cause of the light of the moon (i.e. the reflection of the light of the sun from the surface of a lunar sea). But the indications are that Leonardo knew him personally and, if so, it seems probable that he knew of his edition of the Anothomia. However, Solmi (1919) has pointed out that there was a second Andrea da Imola, Andrea Mainarmi da Imola, who was the author of a Discorso sidla milizia, published in Milan, and he, after all, may have been the Andrea mentioned.
2 A translation of this and also of the Demonstratio mentioned below will be found in G. W. Corner, Anatomical Texts of the Earlier Middle Ages. Carnegie Inst. Wash., 1927.


But even while the Anothomia may have served as an introduction to Leonardo’s anatomical studies and may have given the foundation for his anatomical nomenclature, it can hardly have done more. It is a small book, forty octavo pages, and much of the space is given over to surgical and pathological data and much teleological physiology transmitted from Galen through Arabic interpreters. The organs of the body are briefly described as they are exposed in opening up the three ventres, abdomen, thorax and head, but their descriptions are exceedingly superficial and devoid of detail. The bones are merely enumerated, the muscles of the limbs, to which Leonardo devoted so much attention, are practically unnoticed, since, in Mondino’s opinion,
had practical experience in dissection is indicated by the directions he gives as to how the incisions should be made for the exposure of various parts and by his statement that a certain duct, wrongly described by his source as existing, was unknown to him.


A few years later (12S6) a Parmesan or Lombard physician is reported to have made autopsies of the bodies of persons who had died of an aposthematous pestilence (Solmi, 190G) and in 1302 a postmortem examination was ordered of the body of one Azzolino, who was suspected of having been poisoned. The examination was made by Bartholomeo da Varignana, a famous teacher and practitioner in Bologna, with four associates, and these reported —


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“quod dictum Azzolinum ex veneno aliquo mortuum non fnisse, sed potius et certius ex multitudine sanguinis aggregati circa venam magnam qua? dicitur vena chilis, et venas epatis propinquas eidem, unde prohibita fuit spiritus per ipsam in totum corporis effluxio, et facta caloris innati in toto mortificatio, seu extinctio, ex quo post mortem celeriter circa totum corpus denigratio facta est, quam paxionem adesse prrcdicto Azzolino praedicti Medici sensibiliter cognoverunt visceribus ejus anathomice circumspectis.” 3


The recognition of autopsies given by the authorities in this case was no doubt an important factor in bringing about a greater freedom in the investigation of human cadavers, and it seems probable that early in the fourteenth century advantage was taken of this freedom for the performance of autopsies at Bologna as a means of anatomical instruction. In 1316 there appeared a text-book of anatomy from the pen of Mondino di Luzzi which was destined to supplant that portion of the first book of Avicenna’s Canon which treated of anatomy. 4 It remained the favorite anatomical text-book for over two centuries, partly because of its directness and simplicity of statement, partly because of its recognition of the practical application of anatomy and partly, and largely, because in the treatment of the subject it followed the order in which the various organs would be exposed in an autopsy. In other words it was a Manual of Practical Anatomy rather than a systematic treatise of the subject. It bears evidence in its arrangement that its author is treating his subject on the basis of personal practical experience and, indeed, in the text there is a statement that in 1315 he performed autopsies on two female subjects; but nevertheless the work makes no contribution to the more accurate knowledge of anatomy; it gives nothing beyond what was contained in the Arabian treatises; it repeats their errors and shows their influence in the use of Arabic terms for many of the organs. The contents of Mondino’s work will later be considered more in detail, since it was one of the sources of Leonardo’s knowledge of anatomy; its present significance is that it indicates an increasing interest in the practical study of the human body and it probably had influence in further promoting that interest.


LEONARDO DA VINCI— THE ANATOMIST


3 M. Medici, Compendia Slorico della Scuola Anatomica di Bologna, Bologna, 1857.


they can not be demonstrated in an Anatomy. And the same is true of the nerves and of the blood-vessels, with the exception of the main trunks. One finds in the book nothing of that striving for a thorough knowledge of all the parts, nothing of that desire to understand the mechanical principles involved in their functionings, which are so characteristic of Leonardo. Mondino was a mediaeval anatomist; Leonardo was seized with the spirit of the Renaissance and betook himself to Nature to satisfy his longings, working out his problems by observation and experiment.
4 See G. Martinotti, L'insegnamcnto dell’ Anatomia in Bologna prima del secolo XIX, Bologna, 1911, page 61, where is quoted a portion of a statute of the University of 1405 in which, in the prescription of texts to be studied in the successive years of the medical course, the first book of Avicenna is mentioned always with the addition of the words “excepta anathomica.”


Leonardo must have known Alessandro Benedetti’s Anatomice, since he mentioned it on the cover of Ms.F. Benedetti was born at Lagnano near Verona in 1460 and died in 1525, so that he was a contemporary of Leonardo, though somewhat younger. He was professor of medicine at Padua and published his treatise on anatomy at Venice in 1493. The book had somewhat the same scope as that of Mondino, but Benedetti was a humanist and placed his reliance on Aristotle and Galen rather than on the Arabians, although Averroes and Avicenna are cited. That he had some experience in dissection is indicated by the directions given as to the incisions necessary to expose various organs, but the book is superficial — rather a guide to the performance of an Anatomy than a treatise on anatomy. Benedetti’s reputation rests rather on his De re medica than on his Anatomice.


On QII, 14 there is a reference to “Pladina and other writers on the gullet ( gola )” or at least so it is translated. It is evidently a reference to Bartolommeo Sacchi, who took the name of Platina as a latinization of his native town Piadeno near Mantua. On coming to Rome he endeavored to revive the old pagan customs and so came into collision with the Church. He was twice imprisoned, but on his final release was appointed librarian to the Vatican Library by Sixtus IV and died while holding that post in 1481, at about the age of sixty. He was the author of a work In vitas summorum Pontificum and of a brief History of Mantua, but the work referred to is probably his De honesta voluplate et valitudine, first published at Venice in 1475, a collection of culinary recipes, with remarks upon their dietetic value. Perhaps the word gola should be translated ‘“gluttony” rather than “gullet.”


A work of the fourteenth century which almost equalled in repute the Anothomia of Mondino, especially among the adherents of the school of Montpellier, was the Collectorium artis chirurgicalis medicince, later known as the Cyrurgia magna, of Guy de Chauliac. The author was a native of the Auvergne and obtained his medical education partly at Montpellier and partly at Bologna, where he studied anatomy under Bertuccio, one of Mondino’s pupils. After receiving his doctor’s diploma from the University of Montpellier he practised for a time at Lyon, but later became physician to the papal court at Avignon, and, while there, wrote his Cyrurgia magna (1363). He was renowned as
After Mondino’s time the dissection of human cadavers for the purpose of instruction became of frequent occurrence. Guido de Vigevano, who was physician to the French King Philippe de Valois, in the concluding chapter of his Liber notabilium, which consists mainly of excerpts from translations of Galen and was written in 1345, endeavors to demonstrate the structure of the human body by a series of eighteen figures, which he believes himself capable of doing “cum pluribus et pluribus vicibus ipsam (anathomiam) feci in corpore humano.” 6 Similarly Guy de Chauliac, the greatest of the surgeons of Montpellier, states in his Grande Chirurgie that his Bolognese teacher, Bertucci, who died of the Black Plague in 1347, performed many Anatomies, each consisting of four lessons, as follows:


“In the first he considered the nutritive organs because they perished soonest, in the second the spiritual organs, in the third the animal organs, and in the fourth the extremities .” 6


sources of Leonardo’s anatomical knowledge
Nor was the performance of Anatomies or autopsies limited to Bologna. Gentilis da Foligno, who for a time taught at Bologna and at Perugia and who like Bertucci, fell a victim to the Black Plague, is recorded as having performed an autopsy at Padua in 1341, in which he discovered in the gall bladder of the subject “a green stone,” 7 and further it is also on record that the anatomists of Perugia, when making an anatomy in 1348, found in the neighborhood of the heart a small sac full of poison, the subject having died of an epidemic (Solmi, 1906).


The performance of Anatomies was not, however, allowed to proceed without let or hindrance. Even in Mondino’s time there is record (1319) of a trial in Bologna of four Masters who were accused of having disinterred the body of an executed criminal and of having transported it to the house in which a certain Master Albertus of Bologna was accustomed to lecture, a witness testifying that there he had seen Master Alberto with four other Masters and others persons —


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“existentes super dictum corpus cum rasuris et cultellis et aliis artificiis et sparantes dictum hominem mortuum et alia facientes qute spectat ad artem medicorum .” 8




well for his learning as for his skill as a surgeon, and was fortunate in having access to the translations of Galen’s works made by Nicolaus of Reggio, which, he says, were of a loftier and more perfect style than those translated from the Arabic tongue. He was not, however, exempt from the prevailing Arabistic tendencies, but his chapter on anatomy is more detailed than the book of Mondino and free from the teleological explanations so dear to that author; indeed Guy sets little store by discussions as to the function of organs, regarding them as more properly pertaining to philosophy, “et hoc est pelagus, in quo non licet medicum navigare.”
8 E. Wickersheimer, L“Anatomie” de Guido de Vigevano, medecin de la reine Jeanne de Bourgogne (1345), Arch. f. Gesch. derMedizin, vol. 7, 1913.


The earliest printed edition of the Cyrurgia magna was published at Paris in 1478, as a French translation, but a Latin version was printed in Venice in 1490 and was followed by several later editions. Leonardo may therefore have known it either in manuscript or printed, and it is probable that the name “Guidone” which occurs in one of his manuscripts was a reference to it. But it, too, fell far short of Leonardo’s ideals of what an anatomical text-book should be and its negglect of physiology was not likely to attract to it one whose chief interest in anatomy was the promise it gave for the elucidation of function.
6 Guy de Chauliac, La Grande Chirurgie, restituee 'par M. Laurens Joubert, Rouen, 1632. This is one of the many printed editions of this famous work, which was originally written in 1363.


In the Codex Atlanticus there is a reference to “iEgidius Romanus de formatione corporis humani in ntero matris.” yEgidius Romanus, also known as yEgidius Columna, was a distinguished scholastic prelate, who was born at Rome about 1247 and died in 1316. He rose to be Cardinal- Archbishop of Bourges and General of the Augustinian Order and was the author of many philosophical treatises, the most famous of which was his De regimine principum libri III written for his pupil, Philippe le Bel. It was first printed in 1473 and subsequently republished a number of times both in the original Latin and in French, Italian and Spanish translations. Of a treatise by him De humani corporis formatione there is no record in Graesse, but Haller 1 mentions a work with that title by A5gidius Columna, printed at Venice in 1523, at Paris in 1615, and again at Venice in 1626. Haller characterizes iEgidius as “Barbarus scriptor ex Averrhoe fere sua habet,” but from the brief statement he makes as to the contents of the work it seems probable that iEgidius really drew his material from Aristotle’s De generatione. The facts that Averroes was an Arabic Aristotelian, that .Egidius was a pupil of Thomas Aquinas who removed the ban of the Church from the writings of Aristotle, and that he wrote commentaries on several other works of Aristotle, lend support to this suggestion. Roth (1907) in his discussion of the reference to yEgidius points out that, according to Lzielli, it is not in Leonardo’s handwriting, but suggests that it may have been written in his note-book by one of his medical friends as of interest to him in connection with his
7 M. Roth, Andreas Vesalius, Bruxellensis, Berlin, 1892.


8 See M. Medici, loc. cit. p. 12.


1 A. Haller, Bibliotheca anatomica, vol. 2, p. 737, 1777.


In France, or at least in Paris, it would seem that in the fourteenth century the dissection of the human body was prohibited by the clerical authorities except under a special privilege, concurrent evidence to that effect being furnished by Henri de Mondeville and Guido de Vigevano. De Mondeville was by birth a Frenchman, but he was probably educated in Italy, although there is no direct evidence in support of this idea. At all events he was at Montpellier in 1304 and demonstrated anatomy there, or rather, as Guy de Chauliac informs us, he “pretended to demonstrate anatomy” by the use of thirteen figures. Thence he passed to Paris where he became surgeon to Philippe le Bel, to whom he dedicated his Chirurgie, begun in 1306 but never completed. In the first part of this he treats Anatomy, essentially on the basis of Avicenna’s teaching, but with indications of the methods to be pursued in demonstrating it and in this connection he states —


26
“Si debeant (corpora) servari ultra 4 noctes aut circa et exinde a Romana Ecclesia speciale privilegium habeatur, findatur paries ventris anterior a medio pectoris usque ad pectinem. . . ” 3


Guido de Vigevano, whose early training was presumably obtained in Italy, also based his teaching on figures, making these, indeed, the essential part of his chapter on anatomy, giving as his reason for so doing “Quia prohibitum est ab Ecclesia facere anothomiam in corpore humano.” 10 It is noteworthy that both these works were written in Paris at a time when autopsies were being freely performed in Italy, a fact which suggests that the prohibition may have been a local one. No general enactment of the Church on the question of Anatomies is known, but it has been held that the Bull of Boniface VIII De Sepulturis, issued in 1300, had a prohibitory effect on the practical study of anatomy. The Bull had, however, quite another purpose as is shown by its title which may be translated thus:


LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ANATOMIST
“Those eviscerating the bodies of the dead and barbarously boiling them in order that the bones, separated from the flesh, may be carried for sepulture into their own country are by the act excommunicated.” 11


It was called forth by a practice that had arisen during the Crusades, and while it is possible that it was interpreted by the Parisian clergy as setting a ban on Anatomies, no such interpretation, apparently, was placed upon it in Italy, or if it was, it was short lived. Indeed Alessandro Benedetti, a contemporary of Leonardo, states in his Historia corporis humani (1497) that anatomists were even in the habit of preparing skeletons by boiling without fear of excommunication.


embryological studies. If so it must have been a reference to a manuscript copy of the work, but there is also a remote possibility that it may have been an interpolation by a later hand.
9 J. L. Pagel, Die Chirurgie des Henri de Mondeville , Berlin, 1892.


That Leonardo knew of the writings of the great Dominican, Albertus Magnus, is shown by two references (F, cover; I, 130) to the treatise De carlo et mundi. This, however, is astronomical, but if Leonardo knew it, he probably knew also of the De animalibus, in which Albert has set forth his knowledge of anatomy, zoology and comparative anatomy. Taking into account the century and a half that separated the two, one might say that Leonardo and Albertus were men of much the same type, keen to probe the secrets of all the sciences — Albertus, according to the spirit of his age, with the object of establishing a scientific basis for his theology, Leonardo from a pure love of science. The scholastic, however, was content to set forth the views of others, while Leonardo, inspired by the individualism of the Renaissance, must observe and judge for himself. There is no evidence that Albertus had any personal knowledge of anatomy, except that of the skeleton; he relied very extensively on Avicenna in his exposition of it, not infrequently using his very words. But the influence of Aristotle is also to be seen, and in the chapters on comparative anatomy and zoology the Historia animalium, in the translation by Michael Scot, is the main inspiration, although Albertus contributed to the zoology observations not elsewhere recorded. Since Leonardo intended to include comparative anatomy in the scope of his studies and did to some extent, one would have expected to find in his manuscripts some reference to the De animalibus. Nowhere else, not even in Aristotle’s Historia animalium, could he have found so useful an account of the facts of comparative anatomy, for Albertus, after completing his review of human anatomy, takes this as his standard with which to compare the organs of the lower animals. Leonardo’s studies in comparative anatomy were undertaken partly in the hope that the arrangements in the lower animals would explain those observed in man, and yet there is no evidence that he turned to Albertus for information that might help to realize that hope.
10 E. Wickersheimcr, loc. cit., p. 13.


Of the anatomical treatises of the School of Salerno there is no mention in Leonardo’s manuscripts, but there are possible references to commentaries upon the more famous Regimen Sanitatis Salerni. Thus the memorandum “Della conservazione della Saniti” (CA) is accepted by Roth (1907) as a reference to a work, probably a commentary on the Regimen, by L go Benzi di Siena, who is on record as having performed an Anatomy at Padua in 1429. There is another possibility, however, namely, that the reference may be to the Liber de homine of Hieronymo Manfredi, of which the first and chief part bore the title De conservatione sanitatis, although the text, like Leonardo’s memorandum, is Italian. The book was published in 1474
11 The Bull is quoted in its entirety in a paper by J. J. Walsh, The Popes and the Ilistonj of Anatomt/, Medical Library and Historical Journal, vol. 1, 1904. See also Mediaeval Medicine, London, 1920, by the same author.




sources of leoxardo’s anatomical knowledge


The Humanistic movement, born in Italy in the fourteenth century, manifested itself primarily in literary studies, but soon expanded to include other fields of intellectual activity. Underneath the literary movement and bearing it along was the awakening spirit of the Renaissance, the yearning for emancipation from the domination of dogma, the dissatisfaction with knowledge acquired at second hand, the desire to learn and know from personal observation. This manifested itself in an increasing demand for opportunities for Anatomies, sufficiently insistent to compel from the authorities enactments providing a definite supply of cadavers to be used for such purposes. The first of these enactments of which there is record was passed by the Great Council of Venice in 1368, decreeing that an Anatomy should be made once in each year before the physicians and surgeons, the dissections, according to Nardo, 12 being performed in the Hospital of Ss. Peter and Paul. Shortly after, probably in 1376, a similar privilege was granted to the Medical faculty of the University of Montpellier, this privilege being confirmed several times in later years up to the close of the fifteenth century.


27
It was in that century, however, that the granting of such a privilege became generally established in Italy, indicating a widespread interest in the study of Anatomy. It has been shown that early in the fourteenth century autopsies and Anatomies had been conducted with some frequency at Bologna, but no records have yet been found of decrees legalizing the practise in that municipality. In the early days of the Universities, the relations between the students and teachers were more intimate than in later days. The Italian Universities w T ere primarily guilds of students as contrasted with the guilds of Masters of which the University of Paris was the prototype:’ 3 the students selected their own Masters, the instruction they received was according to personal arrangements into which they entered with their Masters and much of the teaching was done in the houses of the Masters. Martinotti 14 has shown that even anatomy was taught in this extra-mural fashion and continued to be taught privately long after the institution of Public Anatomies, even, indeed, until Galvani’s time, at the close of the eighteenth century, and later. The responsibility for the supply of subjects for these private Anatomies appears in the early days to have rested with the students, an arrangement that naturally led to disturbances and conflicts, to obviate which the Statutes of the University of 1405 prescribed that no one, doctor or student, should be allowed to have possession of a body, unless he should previously have obtained a license for that purpose from the Rector. But this plan, apparently, was not quite satisfactory, and in 1442 it was modified by requiring the Podesta of Bologna to furnish each year at the request of the Rector, two cadavers upon which Anatomies might be made, a condition being made, however, that the cadavers must be obtained from places not less than thirty miles distant from the city of Bologna. This limitation was removed in 1561, after which date the bodies of persons who had been resident even in the suburbs of Bologna might be taken, “modo cives honesti non sint et superioribus ea dare placeat.”




at Bologna, where Manfredi was Professor of Medicine, and passed through several editions, 2 so that it may very well have been known to Leonardo.
12 Quoted by Bottazzi (1907).


Less evident is a reference to “Maghino speculus di M° Giovanni Francioso” (AnB, 2). Roth (1907) identifies “Maghino” with Magninus Mediolanensis, whose Regimen Sanitatis, published as early as 1482, is, according to Haller, 3 identical with Arnald de Villanova’s commentary on the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum. Arnald was also the author of Speculum introductionum medicinalium and this, Roth suggests, may be identical with the commentary on the Regimen, in which case Magninus’ Speculum would be merely an edition of Arnold’s commentary under another name. This suggestion is negatived by the probability that Arnald’s Speculum is a later work than his Regimen and, according to Steinschneider, is based on the Introductio in medicinam of Honein ben Ishaq (Johannitius), and this again on Galen’s Ars parva. The identity of “Maghino Speculus” thus remains unsolved.
13 H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1895.


The only Arabian authors whom Leonardo mentions by name are Avicenna and Al-Kindi, but indirectly a reference occurs to one other. In the passage in the Codex Atlanticus that may refer to the Regimen sanitatis there is mention of one Cibaldone, who, according to Choulant, 4 published in Italian two hygienic poems based on the third book of Rhazes’ Almansor.
14 G. Martinotti, loc. cit., p. 12.


Avicenna is mentioned in several passages. In AnA, 18, one finds “Avic. Li muscoli che movano li diti del pie sono 60.” But one will look in vain for such a statement in Avicenna’s Canon ; he merely states that the muscles moving the toes are many, giving no definite number. 5 6 Mondino, however, gives the number of the muscles in question as sixty on the authority of Avicenna and it seems probable that Leonardo in his reference is quoting from Mondino rather than directly from any translation of the Canon. At the top of QI, 13v is the sentence “Fa tradurre avicena de govamenti.” The significance of this is obscure, since no work of Avicenna with that title is known. Chapters 6 to 13 of the anatomical portion of the Canon, those, that is to say, which deal with the structure and functions of the vertebral column, bear the special title de juvamento dorsi, but it does not seem likely that Leonardo had this in mind, and even if he had it is not clear


2 For an account of the work see C. Singer, A Study in Early Renaissance Anatomy with a New Text: The Anothomia of Hieronymo Manfredi (1490). Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. 1, 1917.


3 A. Haller, Bibliotheca med. pract., vol. 1, 449, 1776.
Nor was Bologna the only Italian city in which the practical study of anatomy was zealously conducted during the fifteenth century, indeed, the renown of Padua as a center for medical instruction was almost, if not quite, as great as that of the sister university. The charter of the University of Padua was granted by the Emperor Frederick II in 1222, and it is probable that it undertook instruction in medicine from its foundation. It is also probable that Anatomies were conducted there even in the fourteenth century, for it was a professor from Padua who performed the first Anatomy in Vienna in 1404. At the beginning of the fifteenth century Padua fell under the domination of Venice (1405) and after that date it quickly rose to great prominence as an anatomical center. Autopsies are on record as having been performed in 1420 and again in 1430, and Montagnana in his Consilia, written in 1444 while he held a professorship of medicine at. Padua, states that he had witnessed fourteen Anatomies. There is record of a public Anatomy held in 1465 at which the doctors discussed all the doubtful points concerning the structure of the body, “atque tandem corpus cum maxima festivitate humatum.” It was not until 1495, however, that a statute was passed requiring the annual delivery to the University for anatomical purposes of two bodies, one male and one female.’ 5 A similar regulation was in force in the fifteenth century at Siena, Perugia, Genoa and Ferrara, and in 1501 at Pisa, while it is known that early in the sixteenth century dissections were made at Pavia by Marc Antonio della Torre.


4 L. Choulant, Handbuch der Bucherkunde fur die altere Medicin, Leipzig, 1841.
It is evident from these data that in the time of Leonardo, the latter half of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, the dissection of the human body was a well-recognized feature of medical instruction; the long-standing prohibition of it, imposed partly by general sentiment and partly by religious opinion, had given way to the spirit of the Renaissance. It will be of interest later to consider the conditions obtaining at Florence, where Leonardo entered upon his anatomical studies, but here a brief account of the methods adopted in the performance of an anatomy will not be amiss, since it will explain the failure of the early anatomists of the Renaissance to advance in their knowledge of anatomy and the greater success of Leonardo.


The work is also mentioned by Graesse. Choulant gives the title as follows: Opera de V excellentissimo physico magistro Cibaldone electa fuori de libri autentici di medicina utilissima a conservarsi sano. Neither place nor date is given.


6 So at least it is in the 1595 edition of the translation of the Canon by Gerard of Cremona, and in the French translation by de Koning.
16 M. Roth, Andreas Vesalius, Bruxcllcnsis, Berlin, 1892.




28


Why was it that with all their opportunities for direct observation, the anatomists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries added little or nothing to the scanty and superficial description of the human body contained in the Canon of Avicenna? Why did they fail even to reach the standard of exposition set up by Avicenna? Because, in the first place, Avicenna was epitomizing the anatomy of Galen while the more modern writers were either epitomizing Avicenna’s epitome, not yet having access to the original Galenic treatises, or else, as in the case of Mondino, were describing on the basis of Avicenna’s epitome what could be seen in an Anatomy, and their Anatomies were limited in their duration, since they possessed no means of preserving the bodies from putrefaction, and in the warm climate of Italy the work could not be prolonged over more than three or four days. Nor was it carried on without intermission during the available time, but apparently was divided into usually four demonstrations in the manner described by Bertucci (see p. 13) ; and furthermore the time available for observation was frequently greatly curtailed by prolonged discussion by the Masters present, of moot points suggested by the demonstration. With these limitations of time it is evident that in the Anatomies of the fifteenth century only a superficial examination of the more conspicuous organs of the body could be made; of detailed dissection there was none. Mondino excuses himself for omitting a discussion of the “simple parts” because these were not perfectly apparent in dissected bodies, but could only be demonstrated in those that had been macerated in running water. He was also accustomed to omit consideration of the bones at the base of the skull, because these were not evident unless they had been boiled, and to do this was to sin, and, similarly, he omitted the nerves which issue from the spinal column, because they could be demonstrated only on boiled or thoroughly dried bodies and for such preparations he had no liking. So too Guy de Chauliac and Berengarius da Carpi maintained that the muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, ligaments and joints could only be studied in bodies that had been macerated in flowing or boiling water or else thoroughly dried in the sun, and there is no evidence that such preparations were demonstrated at the Anatomies. These were little more than demonstrations of the organs contained in the three ventres of the body, the abdomen with the membra naturalia ; the thorax with the membra spiritualia and the head with the membra animalia.


LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ANATOMIST
But not only were the Anatomies incomplete, they were rendered ineffectual by the method in which the instruction was imparted. Several illustrations of Anatomies have come dowm from the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century and these show such uniformity in the details of the scene, that they may be taken as representing what had become the customary ritual. In 1491 a German, Johann Ketham, who had lived in Italy, published under the tital Fasciculus Medicinas a collection of medical treatises, among which was the Anathomia of Mondino. This original edition was in Latin, but in 1493 an Italian translation of it was published by Sebastiano Manilio Romano, and in this the treatise of Mondino was supplied with a colored frontispiece showing an Anatomy (fig. 1). Seated in what may be termed a pulpit, whose canopy is supported by two dolphins, is the professor, who is delivering a lecture or more probably reciting passages from Mondino. Before him, stretched out upon a rough wooden table is a male cadaver and near one end of the table stands a demonstrator, holding in his left hand a short wand with which he points to the thorax of the cadaver, indicating the point at which a third person, a surgeon or barber, who holds a curved knife, is to begin his incision. Six other persons represent the spectators, for whose edification the Anatomy is being performed. "What is essentially the same illustration appears in the 1495 edition of Ketham, but it has been reengraved and presents a number of minor changes. Thus the demonstrator no longer holds a wand, but indicates the place for the incision with his finger, and the professor instead of lecturing or reciting is now reading from a book which lies open on the desk before him. So it is also in an illustration of an anatomy contained in Berengario da Carpi’s Commentaries on Mondino published in 1535, and in this case the demonstrator wields a wand.


Sometimes the demonstrator is omitted, as in the illustration forming the title-page of the Mellerstatt edition of Mondino (1493), in which the only actors in the scene are the professor seated in an imposing chair with a book in his lap and a youthful assistant who is performing the dissection under direction of the professor. And, indeed, there are illustrations which show the professor condescending to do the actual work of dissection himself as in the Anatomy figured in the French translation by Bartholomseus Anglicus (Lyons, 1482) 18 and in Guido da Yigevano’s anatomical figures (1345) (fig. 2). But it is to be noted that the illustrations which show the professor holding himself aloof from the practical side of the anatomy are associated with various editions of Mondino’s Anatomy, which was for so many years the popular text-book. This fact alone would lead to the belief that these illustrations show the custom generally followed by those who used the book, which is as much as to say that they show the custom generally followed in Anatomies during the latter part of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. But there is further and stronger evidence in confirmation of this belief in the scathing statements of Vesalius in the preface to his De corporis humani fabrica (1543), where he speaks of an Anatomy as —


why he should wish to have it translated, since the Latin translation of the Canon by Gerardus Cremonensis was published in Milan in 1473 and subsequently was issued in many editions during Leonardo’s lifetime from the presses of Venice, Padua and Pavia. It would seem much more probable that Leonardo desired a translation of Galen’s de usu partium and wrote the name of Avicenna in error. He mentions elsewhere (AnB, 2) “Galieno de utilita” and the existence of that work was therefore known to him, but Latin translations of Galen’s works were rare in Leonardo’s time, though that edited by Diomcdes Bonardus was published in Venice in 1490 and was printed again in 1502 and 1511 (?). A point worthy of note in this connection is that Mondino in his Anothomia states that he had also written a Lectura super primo, secundo, tertio et quarto de juvamentis — evidently Galen’s de usu partium, and from this statement Leonardo may have obtained knowledge of the work and of the title used on QI, 13v.
“A detestable ceremony in which certain persons are accustomed to perform a dissection of the human body, while others narrate the history of the parts; these latter from a lofty pulpit and with egregious arrogance sing like magpies of things whereof they have no experience, but rather commit to memory from the books of others or place what has been described before their eyes; and the former are so unskilled in languages that they are unable to describe to the spectators what they have dissected.”


A third reference to Avicenna occurs on QIII, 3v, and may be translated thus: “Here Avicenna wishes that the soul generates the soul and the body the body and each member per erata.” (The meaning of the last two words is not clear.) One will search in vain for this statement in the anatomical chapters of the Canon, but it may occur elsewhere in Avicenna’s writings. The Canon "was the most popular medical work of the time, used as a text-book in all the schools of medicine and published in many editions during Leonardo’s lifetime. Leonardo must surely have known it, even if his references to it are inexact.
ie Reproduced by C. Singer in his Studies in the History and Method of Science, Oxford, 1918.


A reference to Al-Kindi is of interest, because that author, one of the most encyclopaedic of the Arab writers, had written a highly esteemed treatise on geometrical and physiological optics, subjects to which Leonardo gave much attention. This work, De aspectibus, had been translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona, but Leonardo’s reference, “Le proporzioni d’Alchino con le considerazioni del Marliano” (CA, 222), is not, according to Solmi (1919), to an original work by Al-Kindi, but to a manuscript commentary on one of these by Giovanni Marliani, who, according to Tiraboschi, was Professor of Medicine in the shortlived University of Milan (1447-1450) and afterward at Pavia, where he died in 1483. He was described in a contemporary document as another Aristotle in philosophy, another Hippocrates in medicine and another Ptolemy in astronomy. It is of interest that Leonardo received the manuscript from Fazio Cardano, the father of the mathematician Gerolamo Cardano.


Of classical authors who might have been consulted, Galen, Pliny, C'elsus, Aristotle and Hippocrates are mentioned. The reference to Galen’s de usu partium has already been considered. Pliny is merely mentioned, as is also Celsus. The name “Cornelio Celso” occurs on Tr, 2v, and shows that Leonardo at least knew of the de re medica,
[[File:McMurrich1930 fig01.jpg|600px]]


'''Fig. 1.''' L An “ Anatomy.” From the Fasciculo di Medicina (Venice, 1493). published by C. Singer, Florence, 1925, p. 64. After facsimile


29
[[File:McMurrich1930 fig02.jpg|600px]]


'''Fig. 2.''' A dissection by Guido da Vigevano (1345). Archiv fur Geschichte der Medizin, vol. 7, pi. 1, 1914.


sources of Leonardo’s anatomical knowledge


which was published at Florence as early as 1478 and many times thereafter. Immediately following the name are the words “The greatest good is wisdom, the greatest evil is bodily pain,” a phrase that reads very like one of Leonardo’s own aphorisms. At all events it is not to be found in the de re medica.


Aristotle is mentioned several times (I, 82v; M, 62), but the citations furnish no evidence that Leonardo had consulted either of the works in which Aristotle treats of anatomy — the Historia animalium and the De partibus animalium. The reference to Hippocrates (S.K., III) reads —
The recollection of former experiences undoubtedly accounts for the sting of these words, but they tell the same story as the illustrations, the aloofness of the lecturer and his reliance on the written text, and the inefficiency of the dissector. Add to these the haste with which the Anatomy had necessarily to be conducted and it is not difficult to understand why, for so long a period, there should have been no essential progress in anatomy.


“Hippocrates says that our semen has its origin from the brain ( celabro ), the lung and the testicles of our parents, where it makes the last decoction ; and all the other members contribute of their substance by sudation to this semen, since no path is evident by which they might be able to reach the semen.”
{{McMurrich1930 footer}}
 
This is a fair statement of the opinions expressed in the Hippocratic treatises De semine and De morbo sacro ; but it is nevertheless doubtful whether Leonardo had a first-hand knowledge of the writings. Their first Latin translation, incomplete at that, was not published until 1525, and the first printed Greek edition, that edited by Asulano, came from the Aldine press in the following year, both publications, therefore, occurring after Leonardo’s death. He may, of course, have had access to a manuscript, for although he was accused of being unlettered {omo samu lettere, CA, 119v), he seems to have had some knowledge of the Greek language (Solmi, 1910).
 
With Hippocrates the list of authors who might have rendered Leonardo inspiration in his anatomical studies and who are mentioned by him is completed, and one is forced to the conclusion that his indebtedness to his predecessors in anatomy was practically limited to what he might have obtained from Mondino and Avicenna. These were the preeminent authorities in his day, and to them he would naturally turn at first for guidance, though once he had acquired the rudiments of his subject he relied apparently on his own observations, so far at least as they were strictly anatomical. In his physiological concepts an indebtedness to Galen is strongly indicated, but the indebtedness may have been rather to the Galenic tradition as set forth by Avicennna than to Galen directly. It is to be noted, however, that his single reference to Galen’s De usu partium occurs in a folio which must be assigned to an early period of his studies (ca. 1489), and it is further to be noted that his association with Marc Antonio della Torre, a pronounced Galenist, might well have awakened a desire for the study of that author.
 
Holl (1905) in his review of Leonardo’s anatomical manuscripts takes essentially the position indicated above, concluding that he could have obtained little assistance from any of the earlier authors available
 
 
30
 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ANATOMIST
 
 
to him, but mentioning of these only Mondino and Avicenna and Galen in Arabistic translations. “Unbefriedigt und vielleicht auch unmuthig wird er die gelesene Werke aus dem Hand gelegt haben.” Roth (1907), however, takes a very different view of the question, claiming that “Leonardo’s anatomy shows many relations to the literature, more abundant and more intimate relations than Leonardo’s scanty citations of authors would indicate.” He endeavors to substantiate this by references to a number of special items, the sources for which he traces for the most part to Galen, though many might as well be assigned to Galenic tradition set forth by Mondino and Avicenna. In selecting items for comment Roth, however, does not distinguish between Leonardo’s earlier and later efforts, making much, for instance, of the errors shown on the Q III, 3v, which unquestionably belongs to an early period, before Leonardo had begun to rely to any great extent on his own observations. The fact, indeed, that the majority of these errors were corrected in later drawings is evidence of Leonardo’s emancipation from the Galenic anatomical tradition and of his reliance on what he saw for himself. But Roth denies that Leonardo made any dissections for himself and in so doing he virtually denies to Leonardo any originality in his anatomical studies; he is forced therefore to find the source of his inspiration in the literature and as evidence in support of this adduces discrepancies in certain of Leonardo’s drawings, which, however, are evidently due to the fact that these drawings are largely schematic. Thus in AnB, 27v, in which Roth calls attention to variations in the number of ribs and vertebrae shown, the structures in which Leonardo is interested are the muscles, and the ribs and vertebrae are represented merely schematically; errors in their number must be ascribed to carelessness, since elsewhere the correct number is stated, and carelessness as to details which for the moment seem unessential may be found in drawings of much later date than Leonardo’s and may be pardoned in his, made at a time when strict accuracy, even in essentials, had not become the standard in anatomical illustration.
 
The study of Leonardo’s anatomical nomenclature does not throw any great amount of light on the sources of his anatomical information. That which he uses is, like his physiological concepts, essentially that of the Arabistic writers of his time, and shows, for example, a remarkable similarity with that of the Anothomia of Hieronymo Manfredi published by Singer* from a Bodleian manuscript. Manfredi was a Bolognese, born about 1430 and therefore some twenty years older than Leonardo. He was educated at the University of his native town and became its Professor of Medicine in 1463, holding that chair until his death thirty years later. He was, however, more renowned for his
 
 
J For reference see foot-note on p. 27.
 
 
sources of Leonardo’s anatomical knowledge 31
 
devotion to astrology than for his skill and knowledge in medicine, although one of his books, Liber de homine, principally concerned with diet but also treating of physiognomy, was very popular.
 
The Anothomia was written at the request of the then ruler of Bologna, Giovanni Bentivoglio, who had attended one of Manfredi’s Anatomies, and may be described as an enlarged and rearranged Mondino. The similarity of Leonardo’s nomenclature to that of the Anothomia extends also to many of the ideas expressed, and one is tempted to believe that Leonardo may have made use of Manfredi’s treatise, especially if the suggestion (p. 27) that he knew of that author’s Liber de homine is well made. The Anothomia , however, was never printed until Singer made it public, and the researches of that writer indicate that the Bodleian manuscript of it is unique, perhaps the sole copy that was prepared for presentation to Bentivoglio, and the similarities that are so striking may be due to the fact that the Anothomia, as Singer expresses it “may be taken to represent, with but little modification, the tradition of Mondino as developed at his own University of Bologna at the end of the fifteenth century.”
 
The Arabic terms found in Leonardo’s manuscripts — such as meri for oesophagus, mirach for abdomen, sifac for peritoneum, raseta for wrist — are all terms used in the Latin versions of Avicenna and in the Anothomia of Mondino, additional evidence of Leonardo’s indebtedness to these works and especially to Mondino’s, for when there is a difference between the terms used by Avicenna and Mondino, Leonardo and also Manfredi follow Mondino. Thus the Latin Avicenna, that by Gerard of Cremona, uses venoe soporarice for the jugular veins, while Mondino uses venoe apopleticce and so do Leonardo and Manfredi; the word alchatim in Avicenna denotes the lumbar vertebrae, while in Mondino, Manfredi and Leonardo ( alcatin , catino) it stands for pelvis. Indeed it may be said in brief that the evidence furnished by the nomenclature points clearly to Mondino as the primary source for both Leonardo and Manfredi, the Latin Avicenna being Mondino’s source.
 
It may be said that in general, Arabian influence is shown in mediaeval anatomical nomenclature in three ways, the most evident of which is the use of Arabic words. A second way is by the literal translation into Latin of Arabic words used in a more or less metaphorical manner. To this group belong the words sylvestris and domestica commonly used by the Arabists to denote respectively outer and inner, especially in connection with the surfaces of the limbs, and the terms focile ovfucile, used for the bones of the forearm and crus, and monoculo used for caecum have probably the same origin. Thirdly and less numerous are Greek words, which take on most un-Greek forms because they are transcriptions into Latin equivalents of Arabic transcriptions of the Greek words. An example of this group may be seen in ahorti or adorti which are more or less accurate transcriptions of awurti, the
 
 
32
 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI — THE ANATOMIST
 
 
Arabic transcription of aorta. Examples of all three groups are to be found in Leonardo’s manuscripts.
 
However, three of the terms used by Leonardo seem worthy of further consideration, two of them because they possibly suggest some Salernitan influence on Leonardo’s nomenclature, while the third may serve to round off, in the light of further information, certain items discussed in Hyrtl’s works on anatomical nomenclature — works invaluable to a student of mediaeval anatomy. 7 On QV, 1 is represented a full-length figure of a man showing the visceral and vascular anatomy and on the right ureter there is the label “ vena cilis” written from above downward and not in the characteristic looking-glass manner. Vena chylis is the term usually applied by mediaeval authors to the vena cava inferior, the word chylis, as Hyrtl has shown, having nothing to do with chyle, but being a corruption, through the Arabic, of the Greek word koile — cava. Leonardo himself uses it for the vena cava ( vena del chilo, QI, 4) and so do Mondino ( chillim ) and Manfredi. On the other hand the usual term for the ureters is the Galenic pori ureterides, and Leonardo uses for them a slight modification of that term ( pori ureterici, AnB, 14). How comes it then that on QV, 1, he labels the ureter vena cilis ? No satisfying answer can be given to this question, but a passage in the Salernitan Anatomia pored, attributed to Copho 3 seems to offer a suggestion. The great vein (vena cava) is described as descending to the level of the kidneys and there bifurcating, and then the passage continues —
 
“et ibi fit vena chilis in qua infiguntur capillares ven$, quse praeter nimia parvitate sua videri non possunt, per quas urina cum quattuor humoribus mittitur ad renes.”
 
This, evidently, is the expression of Galen’s views as to the formation of the urine, but it might be interpreted to mean that since the capillary veins open into the vena chilis, this was the duct leading the urine to the bladder. To aid in such an interpretation is the fact that in the Salernitan treatise the term pori uritides indicates merely the openings of the ureters into the bladder.
 
On QI, 13 is the curious word astalis which is correctly translated as rectum by the editors of the volume. Without the aid of Hyrtl it would have been difficult to determine the origin of this word. It is evidently the same as astale used by Leonardo’s unfortunate contemporary Gabriele Zerbi in his Liber anathomia corporis humani (1502), and this is a corruption of extalis which the dictionaries give as a comprehensive term for the principal viscera, those upon whose appearance the haruspices based their prognostications. According to Hyrtl extale in the sense of rectum is found in the De arte veterinaria srive mulomedicina of Publius Vegetius Renatus (circa A.D. 420) and it
 
7 J. Hyrtl, Das arabische und hcbr&ische in der Anatomie, Wien, 1879; Onomatologia anatomica, Wien, 1880.
 
See foot-note p. 11.
 
SOURCES OF LEONARDO’S ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE
 
 
33
 
 
is interesting to note that extalis is used in the same sense in the Salernitan Demonstratio anatomica. Since the Demonstratio is concerned with the anatomy of the pig, its author may have consulted the veterinary treatise of Vegetius; and Zerbi, mis-spelling the word, may have taken it from the Demonstratio . Since Leonardo similarly mis-spelled it, it is probable that he borrowed it from Zerbi, whose Anathomia may, perhaps, be added to the list of Leonardo’s sources. It is possible, of course, that Leonardo and Zerbi may have taken the word from a common source, in which it had already acquired its incorrect spelling, and, further, it is possible that Zerbi may have borrowed it from a Latin version of Avincenna in which, according to Hyrtl, extale is given as a synonym of rectum.
 
The third term is at first sight most puzzling; it is porno granato, denoting the xiphoid process of the sternum. According to Hyrtl the word pomum was frequently used by the Arabists for any rounded prominence of the body, and therefore for the prominence of the larynx, and since the pomegranate was the variety of pomum most familiar to the peoples of Southern Europe granatum came to be added to it. The thyroid prominence being more marked in men than in women the name pomum viri was also applied to it and the Hebrew equivalent of vir being adam, opportunity was afforded in translation to transform pomum viri into pomum Adamid If this be the correct order of events it would seem that the legend — that the prominence is a reminder of the piece of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that stuck in Adam’s throat — followed the name and not the name the legend. But that is another story.
 
In the Latin Avicenna the larynx is termed epiglottis, the structure now known by that name being called galsamach, which later Arabists supplant by coopertorium (Mondino and Manfredi) or linguella (Leonardo). Pomum granatum and epiglottis were therefore equivalent terms. But the Latin Avicenna terms the xiphoid cartilage the epiglottalis and so pomum granatum becomes also applied to that structure. But why the shift of cartilago epiglottalis from the larynx to the xiphoid process? Hyrtl endeavors to explain it by supposing that the xiphoid cartilage may sometimes bend forward so as to produce a pomum and to this pomum granatum was transferred, epiglottalis following. In reality, as De Koning has clearly shown , 10 the transfer of epiglottalis was the first step. The Arabic word used by Avicenna for the xiphoid cartilage was khanjara which means sword-like and is therefore the exact equivalent of the Greek word xiphoeides. The first letter, kh, of the Arabic word is distinguished from the symbol for h only by having over it a diacritic dot. Either this dot may have been omitted in the Arabic text used by Gerard of Cremona or he overlooked it and so read hanjara for khanjara. And the former means larynx.
 
0 Dr. Sarton, however, points out that adam is the equivalent of homo and not of vir.
 
10 P. de Koning, Trois traites d' anatomic arabes, Leyden, 1903.

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McMurrich JP. Leonardo da Vinci - the anatomist. (1930) Carnegie institution of Washington, Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore.

   Leonardo da Vinci (1930): 1 Introductory | 2 Anatomy from Galen to Leonardo | 3 Possible Literary Sources of Leonardo’s Anatomical Knowledge | 4 Anatomical Illustration before Leonardo | 5 Fortunes and Friends | 6 Leonardo’s Manuscripts, their Reproduction and his Projected Book | 7 Leonardo’s Anatomical Methods | 8 General Anatomy and Physiology | 9 Leonardo’s Canon of Proportions | 10 The Skeleton | 11 The Muscles | 12 The Heart | 13 The Blood-vessels | 14 The Organs of Digestion | 15 The Organs of Respiration | 16 The Excretory and Reproductive Organs | 17 The Nervous System | 18 The Sense Organs | 19 Embryology | 20 Comparative Anatomy | 21 Botany | 22 Conclusion | References | Glossary of Terms | List of Illustrations
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Leonardo da Vinci - The Anatomist

Chapter II Anatomy from Galen to Leonardo

Since, then, a just estimate of Leonardo’s contribution to anatomy can only be arrived at when the state of that science in his day is understood, it will be advisable to consider the opportunities for anatomical studies available during the Middle Ages, the methods employed and the results.

With the death of Galen at the end of the second century of our era, the study of Anatomy entered upon its dark days and for nearly thirteen centuries scarcely a single fact was added to the knowledge of the structure of the human body. Nor does this statement, strong as it is, sufficiently express the condition of anatomical knowledge during this long period; not only was there no progress, there was retrogression. Throughout the Byzantine period synopses of Galen satisfied all demands, the most celebrated being the Collecta medicinalia of Oribasius, compiled at the request of the Emperor Julian and setting forth in concise and orderly succession the statements of the garrulous Galen. Theophilus Protospatharius in the seventh century does seem to have interested himself in dissection and to have added slightly to anatomical knowledge, but such activity was exceptional; and while the period produced some works of importance in the history of medicine and surgery, as far as anatomy was concerned it was almost barren. Later, in Europe the feudalism of the Middle Ages suppressed personal initiative among the mass of the people, each man’s actions and behavior being dictated by the behests of his feudal lord; and among the clerics, from whom light might have been expected, the dogmas of the Church, formluated by the great Councils of the fifth and sixth centuries, defined within narrow limits the mode of thought. Life in all its aspects became highly conventionalized; feudalism produced such conventionalisms as knight-errantry, trial by combat, courts of love and, the climax of them all, the science of Heraldry; philosophy became conventionalized into rhetorical contests between Realists and Nominalists; and art, employed almost exclusively for religious instruction, became stereotyped into the stiff expressionless forms characteristic of early Christian paintings.

Conventionalism is dogmatism crystallized, and dogmatism means finality. What wonder then that the formulation of Christian theology, with its attendant sectarian bitterness, persecutions, riots, and even massacres, resulted in a belief that the last word had been spoken on matters theological. The essence of that theology was absolute faith in the dogmas of the Church ; faith and not reason was the foundation of knowledge of both the supernatural and natural worlds, and of the two worlds it was the supernatural that held the chief place in men’s minds. For their knowledge of natural phenomena they were content to rely upon the statements contained in the writings of the Fathers, these statements in turn being based upon those of earlier writers, provided that these did not conflict with the patristic interpretation of the Scriptures. The character of mediaeval philosophy has been aptly stated in these words:

“A reversed pyramid, whose base was occupied by spiritual matters and of which the imperceptible point of the apex was constituted by man and nature, as things transitory and fleeting — that is the symbol of mediaeval doctrine.” (Solmi, 1910.)

Under such circumstances there was naturally no incitement to personal observation, and experiment and science languished. It became conventionalized largely according to the Galenic tradition, and this tradition came to possess a finality; it was complete and unassailable, there was nothing to be added to it and nothing to be corrected. The word tradition is used advisedly because during the middle ages the original Galen had become practically unknown. Except in Constantinople and probably in such centers as Salerno and Montpellier, Greek had become to all intents a dead language, and Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen were known only through tradition that had filtered down from the past. Fortunately the works of these authors were not destined for oblivion; they were saved to the World and restored to Europe through the appreciation by the Arabs of what was best in the philosophy and science of the Greeks.

The role of the Arabs in the history of the intellectual development of Europe was an interesting one. Primarily a pastoral and more or or less nomadic people, divided by intertribal feuds, they were welded into a nation by the religious enthusiasm of Mahomet and his small band of early converts, and, after a remarkable career of conquest, they settled down in their capitals to cultivate the arts of peace, just as the Ptolemies had done centuries before in Alexandria. Bagdad and Cordova became centers of learning in which Arabian sages studied and expounded the wisdom of the Greeks. But the Arabs had no knowledge of the Greek tongue and their first care was to secure the services of Syrians, Jews and Nestorian Christians to translate into Arabic the works whose contents they desired to master, and it was not long before all the important scientific and philosophical treatises of classical times appeared in an Arabic guise. From these translations as a source, there flowed a stream of abstracts, commentaries and treatises by Arabian authors, which, however, added little to the volume of human knowledge. For the Arabs showed little originality; what they handed on was Greek science and philosophy with, it is true, some oriental color in its presentation and application, but still essentially Greek. The Arabs contributed little, but they were the keepers of the Light through the Dark Ages and they restored it to the Western world where it had become well-nigh extinct.

The activities of the Arabian commentators could not indefinitely remain unknown to the scholars of western Europe. Already in the latter half of the eleventh century Constantinus Africanus, after spending forty years of his life among the Arabs, was received into the Monastery of Monte Cassino, not far from Salerno, and interested himself in the translation into Latin of Arabic versions of Galen’s Ars parva and Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, as well as of treatises by Ali Abbas and other Arabian commentators of less renown. The capture of Toledo from the Moors by Alfonso VI in 1085 also revealed to the Christian conquerors something of the wealth of the Arabic literature and awakened desire for a better acquaintance with the wisdom of the Arabs. But it was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that Arabian influence became most pronounced in Europe. In the twelfth century Toledo became the seat of a bureau of translation organized by the Archbishop Raymond and in the thirteenth century the capture by the Christians of such cities as Cordova and Seville brought further treasures into the hands of the conquerors. Especially under Alfonso X, surnamed The Wise, earnest attempts were made to utilize these treasures to the full; the observations of the Arabian astronomers were collated to form the Alfonsine Tables, while the work of translation went on apace.

But not only were the conditions in Spain favorable for the dissemination of Arabian learning, circumstances made Italy at this same time especially ready for its reception. The Hohenstaufen rulers of Sicily and Naples were strongly biased in favor of the eastern customs and their courts were oriental rather than occidental in their ceremonials. This was especially true in the case of Frederick II, who, notwithstanding that he was under the ban of the Church, led a crusade to the Holy Land and gained important concessions from the Sultan of Jerusalem, with whom he swore a blood-brotherhood. In 1241, Frederick promulgated an edict setting forth the requirements necessary for a license to practice medicine and surgery within his dominions, these requirements demanding that the candidate should have studied the science of logic for at least three years and thereafter should have pursued the study of medicine for five years and have practiced for one year under the guidance of a reputable physician, after which he must satisfy the masters at Salerno of his fitness by satisfactorily undergoing a public examination chiefly on the works of Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna. It is evident that at this time Arabistic medicine was thoroughly established at Salerno, then at the height of its renown as a center for medical training, but soon to give place to the younger universities of Montpellier and Bologna.

In these, too, Arabian influences became predominant in the thirteenth century. Arnald de Villanova, probably a Spaniard and familiar with both Greek and Arabic, came to Montpellier toward the end of the century, and by his learning, originality and independence contributed greatly to the overthrow of the scholastic methods and to the substitution therefor of the forgotten precepts of the ancient masters, preserved and elaborated by Rhazes and Avicenna. Indeed, he was more than an Arabist; like his contemporary Roger Bacon he advocated and practised observation and experiment as the sources of scientific knowledge, thereby gaining for himself, as did Bacon, reputation as an exponent of the Black Art. His alchemistic predilections did not, however, lead him into mysticism, and his skill as a physician gave an authority to his appreciation of the Arabian contributions to medicine and found a reflection in the compendiums and commentaries of Arabian medical writers that came from representatives of the Montpellier school during the fourteenth century.

The University of Bologna primarily possessed but two faculties, those of Arts and Law, each with its own rector, and although it seems probable that medicine was taught there as early as the eleventh century, it was not until 1260 that the teaching of Thaddeus Alderotti, commonly known as Thaddeus Florentinus, began to attract students in considerable number, and in 1306 the Medical faculty was given an independent rector. Thaddeus was well versed in the medical lore of his day, both Greek and Arabic, and he and his pupils added to the list of commentaries on the works of the ancient and more recent writers. Of these works those chiefly studied by the students were, as at Salerno, the Ars parva of Galen and the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, but acquaintance w r as also required with other works of those authors and with the Colliget of Averrhoes, the Canon of Avicenna and the Almansor of Rhazes. (Rashdall.)

In the thirteenth century, accordingly, the three great medical schools of Europe were deeply under the influence of Arabian authors, and while these restored a better knowledge of the Greeks, they also imposed limitations, since that knowledge came bound by the restrictions imposed by Arab custom. Chief among the results of these restrictions was the divorce of medicine and surgery, which was so pronounced during the Middle Ages. It was due in part to the influence of the oriental tradition against the use of the knife and in part to the general attitude inculcated by Scholasticism. Medicine lent itself more readily to the dialectic dear to the Scholastic, to argumentation as to causes, principles and treatment; whereas surgery required prompt and effective action, and in the foundation of the Universities it was medicine that was taught and practised by the Faculties of Medicine, and surgery was largely left in the hands of barbers, bathkeepers and even public executioners. There were, it is true, some learned surgeons, such as Theodoric and William of Saliceto of Bologna, Lanfranchi and de Monde ville of Paris and Guy de Chauliac of Montpellier, but their number was small and for the most part the physician deemed it beneath his dignity to undertake the treatment of wounds or fractures or operations such as couching and lithotomy, to say nothing of bleeding and tooth extraction. For the physician an intimate knowledge of anatomy was unnecessary; if he knew the position of the various organs of the body and their presumed functions he had all he required, and this he could obtain from a translation of an Arabic summary of Galen’s anatomical treatises, such as is found in Avicenna’s Canon. Ihe original treatises, and especially the de administrationibus anatomicis, remained neglected, even though an Arabic translation of the latter had been made by Honein (Johannitius) or his son-in-law Ilobeisch as early as the ninth century. It was translations of Arabic versions of the Ars medica (commonly known to the Arabists as the Microtechne) and the Methodus medendi {Megalechne) that were especially studied during the Middle Ages: and while the de usu partium awakened some interest for Galen’s anatomical treatises, the summation of the anatomical knowledge of his day, the learned physician felt no need and the barber-surgeon was too ignorant to make use of them.

So the study of anatomy became conventionalized into the reading of a translation into Latin of an imperfect summary by an Arab of Galen’s teaching, and, since its source was Galen, the complete submission to the dictates of antiquity that characterized the Middle Ages gave it an authority and finality that well-nigh suppressed all stimulus to further inquiry. Indeed, ignorance of the original treatises concealed the fact that Galen’s contributions to anatomy were based on the dissection of animals, chiefly monkeys, that his anatomy was not in reality human anatomy, and when this fact was revealed by the investigations of Vesaiius in the sixteenth century their unshaken confidence in the infallibility of Galen led at least one of the Galenists to the conclusion that the structure of the human body mast have altered materially in some respects during the centuries that had elapsed since Galen’s day.

But notwithstanding the profound subservience to dogma, the faint flicker of revolt against it shown by such men as Roger Bacon and Arnald de Yillanova was not entirely extinguished, for the thirteenth century witnessed the encouragement of the study of anatomy by direct observation, such as had not been given since the days of Galen. The Emperor Frederick II, when prescribing the course of study to be pursued by those wishing to practice medicine within his dominions, enacted that no surgeon should be allowed to practise unless “Above all he has learned the anatomy of the human body at the medical school and is fully equipped in this department of medicine, without which neither operations of any kind can be undertaken with success, nor fractures be properly treated.” 1 This does not necessarily mean that the prospective surgeon must have learned his anatomy by the actual dissection of a human body; the School of Salerno was indeed noted for its interest in practical instruction in medicine, but there is no record of a dissection of a human body having been performed under its auspices. Toward the close of the eleventh century, at the period when Arabic influences were beginning to supplant the Greek tradition that had persisted in the School, one Copho, a member of that school, wrote a brief treatise on the anatomy of the pig, Anatomia porci , 2 consisting in its printed form of about two and a half pages and amounting to little more than an enumeration of the various organs to be seen in opening the body of the animal. It describes an autopsy rather than a dissection, but is of interest as evidencing some appreciation of the importance of a knowledge of anatomy based on personal observation. Somewhat more detailed was the Demonstratio anatomica by an anonymous author of the same school, also based on the autopsy of a pig, but these early attempts of the Salernitans to revive the practical study of anatomy were destined to be supplanted by treatises based on the study of the human body, the first attempts in this direction of which there is record, since the days of the Alexandrian anatomists.

It is to Bologna that the credit for the revival of practical human anatomy is due, and it is interesting to note that the long-continued repugnance to the dissection of human cadavers was only gradually overcome by the desire for a more definite knowledge of the pathological changes produced by disease or by the demands of justice for definite evidence in cases of suspected poisoning. The first instance on record of such a revival was a legal autopsy performed by the Bolognese surgeon William of Saliceto on the body of the nephew of the Marchese Uberto Pallavicino, who was suspected of having died from the administration of poison. William of Saliceto was the author of a Cyrurgia, written in 1275, the fourth book of which is devoted to a compendium of Anatomy in five chapters. It is Galenic anatomy, similar to that found in mediaeval manuscripts, and, to judge from the use of Arabic terms for certain parts, was based upon an Arabic source, probably Avicenna. That William, “qui Gulielmina dicitur,”


1 J. J. Walsh, Mediaeval Medicine, London, 1920. The translation is made from a copy of the edict published in Huillard-Brehollis’ Diplomatic History of Frederick II, with Documents, Paris, 1851-1861.

2 A translation of this and also of the Demonstratio mentioned below will be found in G. W. Corner, Anatomical Texts of the Earlier Middle Ages. Carnegie Inst. Wash., 1927.

had practical experience in dissection is indicated by the directions he gives as to how the incisions should be made for the exposure of various parts and by his statement that a certain duct, wrongly described by his source as existing, was unknown to him.

A few years later (12S6) a Parmesan or Lombard physician is reported to have made autopsies of the bodies of persons who had died of an aposthematous pestilence (Solmi, 190G) and in 1302 a postmortem examination was ordered of the body of one Azzolino, who was suspected of having been poisoned. The examination was made by Bartholomeo da Varignana, a famous teacher and practitioner in Bologna, with four associates, and these reported —

“quod dictum Azzolinum ex veneno aliquo mortuum non fnisse, sed potius et certius ex multitudine sanguinis aggregati circa venam magnam qua? dicitur vena chilis, et venas epatis propinquas eidem, unde prohibita fuit spiritus per ipsam in totum corporis effluxio, et facta caloris innati in toto mortificatio, seu extinctio, ex quo post mortem celeriter circa totum corpus denigratio facta est, quam paxionem adesse prrcdicto Azzolino praedicti Medici sensibiliter cognoverunt visceribus ejus anathomice circumspectis.” 3

The recognition of autopsies given by the authorities in this case was no doubt an important factor in bringing about a greater freedom in the investigation of human cadavers, and it seems probable that early in the fourteenth century advantage was taken of this freedom for the performance of autopsies at Bologna as a means of anatomical instruction. In 1316 there appeared a text-book of anatomy from the pen of Mondino di Luzzi which was destined to supplant that portion of the first book of Avicenna’s Canon which treated of anatomy. 4 It remained the favorite anatomical text-book for over two centuries, partly because of its directness and simplicity of statement, partly because of its recognition of the practical application of anatomy and partly, and largely, because in the treatment of the subject it followed the order in which the various organs would be exposed in an autopsy. In other words it was a Manual of Practical Anatomy rather than a systematic treatise of the subject. It bears evidence in its arrangement that its author is treating his subject on the basis of personal practical experience and, indeed, in the text there is a statement that in 1315 he performed autopsies on two female subjects; but nevertheless the work makes no contribution to the more accurate knowledge of anatomy; it gives nothing beyond what was contained in the Arabian treatises; it repeats their errors and shows their influence in the use of Arabic terms for many of the organs. The contents of Mondino’s work will later be considered more in detail, since it was one of the sources of Leonardo’s knowledge of anatomy; its present significance is that it indicates an increasing interest in the practical study of the human body and it probably had influence in further promoting that interest.


3 M. Medici, Compendia Slorico della Scuola Anatomica di Bologna, Bologna, 1857.

4 See G. Martinotti, L'insegnamcnto dell’ Anatomia in Bologna prima del secolo XIX, Bologna, 1911, page 61, where is quoted a portion of a statute of the University of 1405 in which, in the prescription of texts to be studied in the successive years of the medical course, the first book of Avicenna is mentioned always with the addition of the words “excepta anathomica.”


After Mondino’s time the dissection of human cadavers for the purpose of instruction became of frequent occurrence. Guido de Vigevano, who was physician to the French King Philippe de Valois, in the concluding chapter of his Liber notabilium, which consists mainly of excerpts from translations of Galen and was written in 1345, endeavors to demonstrate the structure of the human body by a series of eighteen figures, which he believes himself capable of doing “cum pluribus et pluribus vicibus ipsam (anathomiam) feci in corpore humano.” 6 Similarly Guy de Chauliac, the greatest of the surgeons of Montpellier, states in his Grande Chirurgie that his Bolognese teacher, Bertucci, who died of the Black Plague in 1347, performed many Anatomies, each consisting of four lessons, as follows:

“In the first he considered the nutritive organs because they perished soonest, in the second the spiritual organs, in the third the animal organs, and in the fourth the extremities .” 6

Nor was the performance of Anatomies or autopsies limited to Bologna. Gentilis da Foligno, who for a time taught at Bologna and at Perugia and who like Bertucci, fell a victim to the Black Plague, is recorded as having performed an autopsy at Padua in 1341, in which he discovered in the gall bladder of the subject “a green stone,” 7 and further it is also on record that the anatomists of Perugia, when making an anatomy in 1348, found in the neighborhood of the heart a small sac full of poison, the subject having died of an epidemic (Solmi, 1906).

The performance of Anatomies was not, however, allowed to proceed without let or hindrance. Even in Mondino’s time there is record (1319) of a trial in Bologna of four Masters who were accused of having disinterred the body of an executed criminal and of having transported it to the house in which a certain Master Albertus of Bologna was accustomed to lecture, a witness testifying that there he had seen Master Alberto with four other Masters and others persons —

“existentes super dictum corpus cum rasuris et cultellis et aliis artificiis et sparantes dictum hominem mortuum et alia facientes qute spectat ad artem medicorum .” 8


8 E. Wickersheimer, L“Anatomie” de Guido de Vigevano, medecin de la reine Jeanne de Bourgogne (1345), Arch. f. Gesch. derMedizin, vol. 7, 1913.

6 Guy de Chauliac, La Grande Chirurgie, restituee 'par M. Laurens Joubert, Rouen, 1632. This is one of the many printed editions of this famous work, which was originally written in 1363.

7 M. Roth, Andreas Vesalius, Bruxellensis, Berlin, 1892.

8 See M. Medici, loc. cit. p. 12.


In France, or at least in Paris, it would seem that in the fourteenth century the dissection of the human body was prohibited by the clerical authorities except under a special privilege, concurrent evidence to that effect being furnished by Henri de Mondeville and Guido de Vigevano. De Mondeville was by birth a Frenchman, but he was probably educated in Italy, although there is no direct evidence in support of this idea. At all events he was at Montpellier in 1304 and demonstrated anatomy there, or rather, as Guy de Chauliac informs us, he “pretended to demonstrate anatomy” by the use of thirteen figures. Thence he passed to Paris where he became surgeon to Philippe le Bel, to whom he dedicated his Chirurgie, begun in 1306 but never completed. In the first part of this he treats Anatomy, essentially on the basis of Avicenna’s teaching, but with indications of the methods to be pursued in demonstrating it and in this connection he states —

“Si debeant (corpora) servari ultra 4 noctes aut circa et exinde a Romana Ecclesia speciale privilegium habeatur, findatur paries ventris anterior a medio pectoris usque ad pectinem. . . ” 3

Guido de Vigevano, whose early training was presumably obtained in Italy, also based his teaching on figures, making these, indeed, the essential part of his chapter on anatomy, giving as his reason for so doing “Quia prohibitum est ab Ecclesia facere anothomiam in corpore humano.” 10 It is noteworthy that both these works were written in Paris at a time when autopsies were being freely performed in Italy, a fact which suggests that the prohibition may have been a local one. No general enactment of the Church on the question of Anatomies is known, but it has been held that the Bull of Boniface VIII De Sepulturis, issued in 1300, had a prohibitory effect on the practical study of anatomy. The Bull had, however, quite another purpose as is shown by its title which may be translated thus:

“Those eviscerating the bodies of the dead and barbarously boiling them in order that the bones, separated from the flesh, may be carried for sepulture into their own country are by the act excommunicated.” 11

It was called forth by a practice that had arisen during the Crusades, and while it is possible that it was interpreted by the Parisian clergy as setting a ban on Anatomies, no such interpretation, apparently, was placed upon it in Italy, or if it was, it was short lived. Indeed Alessandro Benedetti, a contemporary of Leonardo, states in his Historia corporis humani (1497) that anatomists were even in the habit of preparing skeletons by boiling without fear of excommunication.

9 J. L. Pagel, Die Chirurgie des Henri de Mondeville , Berlin, 1892.

10 E. Wickersheimcr, loc. cit., p. 13.

11 The Bull is quoted in its entirety in a paper by J. J. Walsh, The Popes and the Ilistonj of Anatomt/, Medical Library and Historical Journal, vol. 1, 1904. See also Mediaeval Medicine, London, 1920, by the same author.


The Humanistic movement, born in Italy in the fourteenth century, manifested itself primarily in literary studies, but soon expanded to include other fields of intellectual activity. Underneath the literary movement and bearing it along was the awakening spirit of the Renaissance, the yearning for emancipation from the domination of dogma, the dissatisfaction with knowledge acquired at second hand, the desire to learn and know from personal observation. This manifested itself in an increasing demand for opportunities for Anatomies, sufficiently insistent to compel from the authorities enactments providing a definite supply of cadavers to be used for such purposes. The first of these enactments of which there is record was passed by the Great Council of Venice in 1368, decreeing that an Anatomy should be made once in each year before the physicians and surgeons, the dissections, according to Nardo, 12 being performed in the Hospital of Ss. Peter and Paul. Shortly after, probably in 1376, a similar privilege was granted to the Medical faculty of the University of Montpellier, this privilege being confirmed several times in later years up to the close of the fifteenth century.

It was in that century, however, that the granting of such a privilege became generally established in Italy, indicating a widespread interest in the study of Anatomy. It has been shown that early in the fourteenth century autopsies and Anatomies had been conducted with some frequency at Bologna, but no records have yet been found of decrees legalizing the practise in that municipality. In the early days of the Universities, the relations between the students and teachers were more intimate than in later days. The Italian Universities w T ere primarily guilds of students as contrasted with the guilds of Masters of which the University of Paris was the prototype:’ 3 the students selected their own Masters, the instruction they received was according to personal arrangements into which they entered with their Masters and much of the teaching was done in the houses of the Masters. Martinotti 14 has shown that even anatomy was taught in this extra-mural fashion and continued to be taught privately long after the institution of Public Anatomies, even, indeed, until Galvani’s time, at the close of the eighteenth century, and later. The responsibility for the supply of subjects for these private Anatomies appears in the early days to have rested with the students, an arrangement that naturally led to disturbances and conflicts, to obviate which the Statutes of the University of 1405 prescribed that no one, doctor or student, should be allowed to have possession of a body, unless he should previously have obtained a license for that purpose from the Rector. But this plan, apparently, was not quite satisfactory, and in 1442 it was modified by requiring the Podesta of Bologna to furnish each year at the request of the Rector, two cadavers upon which Anatomies might be made, a condition being made, however, that the cadavers must be obtained from places not less than thirty miles distant from the city of Bologna. This limitation was removed in 1561, after which date the bodies of persons who had been resident even in the suburbs of Bologna might be taken, “modo cives honesti non sint et superioribus ea dare placeat.”


12 Quoted by Bottazzi (1907).

13 H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1895.

14 G. Martinotti, loc. cit., p. 12.


Nor was Bologna the only Italian city in which the practical study of anatomy was zealously conducted during the fifteenth century, indeed, the renown of Padua as a center for medical instruction was almost, if not quite, as great as that of the sister university. The charter of the University of Padua was granted by the Emperor Frederick II in 1222, and it is probable that it undertook instruction in medicine from its foundation. It is also probable that Anatomies were conducted there even in the fourteenth century, for it was a professor from Padua who performed the first Anatomy in Vienna in 1404. At the beginning of the fifteenth century Padua fell under the domination of Venice (1405) and after that date it quickly rose to great prominence as an anatomical center. Autopsies are on record as having been performed in 1420 and again in 1430, and Montagnana in his Consilia, written in 1444 while he held a professorship of medicine at. Padua, states that he had witnessed fourteen Anatomies. There is record of a public Anatomy held in 1465 at which the doctors discussed all the doubtful points concerning the structure of the body, “atque tandem corpus cum maxima festivitate humatum.” It was not until 1495, however, that a statute was passed requiring the annual delivery to the University for anatomical purposes of two bodies, one male and one female.’ 5 A similar regulation was in force in the fifteenth century at Siena, Perugia, Genoa and Ferrara, and in 1501 at Pisa, while it is known that early in the sixteenth century dissections were made at Pavia by Marc Antonio della Torre.

It is evident from these data that in the time of Leonardo, the latter half of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, the dissection of the human body was a well-recognized feature of medical instruction; the long-standing prohibition of it, imposed partly by general sentiment and partly by religious opinion, had given way to the spirit of the Renaissance. It will be of interest later to consider the conditions obtaining at Florence, where Leonardo entered upon his anatomical studies, but here a brief account of the methods adopted in the performance of an anatomy will not be amiss, since it will explain the failure of the early anatomists of the Renaissance to advance in their knowledge of anatomy and the greater success of Leonardo.


16 M. Roth, Andreas Vesalius, Bruxcllcnsis, Berlin, 1892.


Why was it that with all their opportunities for direct observation, the anatomists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries added little or nothing to the scanty and superficial description of the human body contained in the Canon of Avicenna? Why did they fail even to reach the standard of exposition set up by Avicenna? Because, in the first place, Avicenna was epitomizing the anatomy of Galen while the more modern writers were either epitomizing Avicenna’s epitome, not yet having access to the original Galenic treatises, or else, as in the case of Mondino, were describing on the basis of Avicenna’s epitome what could be seen in an Anatomy, and their Anatomies were limited in their duration, since they possessed no means of preserving the bodies from putrefaction, and in the warm climate of Italy the work could not be prolonged over more than three or four days. Nor was it carried on without intermission during the available time, but apparently was divided into usually four demonstrations in the manner described by Bertucci (see p. 13) ; and furthermore the time available for observation was frequently greatly curtailed by prolonged discussion by the Masters present, of moot points suggested by the demonstration. With these limitations of time it is evident that in the Anatomies of the fifteenth century only a superficial examination of the more conspicuous organs of the body could be made; of detailed dissection there was none. Mondino excuses himself for omitting a discussion of the “simple parts” because these were not perfectly apparent in dissected bodies, but could only be demonstrated in those that had been macerated in running water. He was also accustomed to omit consideration of the bones at the base of the skull, because these were not evident unless they had been boiled, and to do this was to sin, and, similarly, he omitted the nerves which issue from the spinal column, because they could be demonstrated only on boiled or thoroughly dried bodies and for such preparations he had no liking. So too Guy de Chauliac and Berengarius da Carpi maintained that the muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, ligaments and joints could only be studied in bodies that had been macerated in flowing or boiling water or else thoroughly dried in the sun, and there is no evidence that such preparations were demonstrated at the Anatomies. These were little more than demonstrations of the organs contained in the three ventres of the body, the abdomen with the membra naturalia ; the thorax with the membra spiritualia and the head with the membra animalia.

But not only were the Anatomies incomplete, they were rendered ineffectual by the method in which the instruction was imparted. Several illustrations of Anatomies have come dowm from the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century and these show such uniformity in the details of the scene, that they may be taken as representing what had become the customary ritual. In 1491 a German, Johann Ketham, who had lived in Italy, published under the tital Fasciculus Medicinas a collection of medical treatises, among which was the Anathomia of Mondino. This original edition was in Latin, but in 1493 an Italian translation of it was published by Sebastiano Manilio Romano, and in this the treatise of Mondino was supplied with a colored frontispiece showing an Anatomy (fig. 1). Seated in what may be termed a pulpit, whose canopy is supported by two dolphins, is the professor, who is delivering a lecture or more probably reciting passages from Mondino. Before him, stretched out upon a rough wooden table is a male cadaver and near one end of the table stands a demonstrator, holding in his left hand a short wand with which he points to the thorax of the cadaver, indicating the point at which a third person, a surgeon or barber, who holds a curved knife, is to begin his incision. Six other persons represent the spectators, for whose edification the Anatomy is being performed. "What is essentially the same illustration appears in the 1495 edition of Ketham, but it has been reengraved and presents a number of minor changes. Thus the demonstrator no longer holds a wand, but indicates the place for the incision with his finger, and the professor instead of lecturing or reciting is now reading from a book which lies open on the desk before him. So it is also in an illustration of an anatomy contained in Berengario da Carpi’s Commentaries on Mondino published in 1535, and in this case the demonstrator wields a wand.

Sometimes the demonstrator is omitted, as in the illustration forming the title-page of the Mellerstatt edition of Mondino (1493), in which the only actors in the scene are the professor seated in an imposing chair with a book in his lap and a youthful assistant who is performing the dissection under direction of the professor. And, indeed, there are illustrations which show the professor condescending to do the actual work of dissection himself as in the Anatomy figured in the French translation by Bartholomseus Anglicus (Lyons, 1482) 18 and in Guido da Yigevano’s anatomical figures (1345) (fig. 2). But it is to be noted that the illustrations which show the professor holding himself aloof from the practical side of the anatomy are associated with various editions of Mondino’s Anatomy, which was for so many years the popular text-book. This fact alone would lead to the belief that these illustrations show the custom generally followed by those who used the book, which is as much as to say that they show the custom generally followed in Anatomies during the latter part of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. But there is further and stronger evidence in confirmation of this belief in the scathing statements of Vesalius in the preface to his De corporis humani fabrica (1543), where he speaks of an Anatomy as —

“A detestable ceremony in which certain persons are accustomed to perform a dissection of the human body, while others narrate the history of the parts; these latter from a lofty pulpit and with egregious arrogance sing like magpies of things whereof they have no experience, but rather commit to memory from the books of others or place what has been described before their eyes; and the former are so unskilled in languages that they are unable to describe to the spectators what they have dissected.”

ie Reproduced by C. Singer in his Studies in the History and Method of Science, Oxford, 1918.


McMurrich1930 fig01.jpg

Fig. 1. L An “ Anatomy.” From the Fasciculo di Medicina (Venice, 1493). published by C. Singer, Florence, 1925, p. 64. After facsimile

McMurrich1930 fig02.jpg

Fig. 2. A dissection by Guido da Vigevano (1345). Archiv fur Geschichte der Medizin, vol. 7, pi. 1, 1914.


The recollection of former experiences undoubtedly accounts for the sting of these words, but they tell the same story as the illustrations, the aloofness of the lecturer and his reliance on the written text, and the inefficiency of the dissector. Add to these the haste with which the Anatomy had necessarily to be conducted and it is not difficult to understand why, for so long a period, there should have been no essential progress in anatomy.


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Pages where the terms "Historic" (textbooks, papers, people, recommendations) appear on this site, and sections within pages where this disclaimer appears, indicate that the content and scientific understanding are specific to the time of publication. This means that while some scientific descriptions are still accurate, the terminology and interpretation of the developmental mechanisms reflect the understanding at the time of original publication and those of the preceding periods, these terms, interpretations and recommendations may not reflect our current scientific understanding.     (More? Embryology History | Historic Embryology Papers)
   Leonardo da Vinci (1930): 1 Introductory | 2 Anatomy from Galen to Leonardo | 3 Possible Literary Sources of Leonardo’s Anatomical Knowledge | 4 Anatomical Illustration before Leonardo | 5 Fortunes and Friends | 6 Leonardo’s Manuscripts, their Reproduction and his Projected Book | 7 Leonardo’s Anatomical Methods | 8 General Anatomy and Physiology | 9 Leonardo’s Canon of Proportions | 10 The Skeleton | 11 The Muscles | 12 The Heart | 13 The Blood-vessels | 14 The Organs of Digestion | 15 The Organs of Respiration | 16 The Excretory and Reproductive Organs | 17 The Nervous System | 18 The Sense Organs | 19 Embryology | 20 Comparative Anatomy | 21 Botany | 22 Conclusion | References | Glossary of Terms | List of Illustrations


Reference: McMurrich JP. Leonardo da Vinci - the anatomist. (1930) Carnegie institution of Washington, Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore.

Cite this page: Hill, M.A. (2024, April 20) Embryology Leonardo da Vinci - the anatomist (1930) 2. Retrieved from https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_the_anatomist_(1930)_2

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