7. Anatomy Comparison Documents
Leonardo, Fetus inside the Uterus
Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519.-Anatomical study: Fetus inside the uterus, Membrane of the uterus.-C.1510,13. Pen and ink and red chalk, 304 x 220 mm. Anatomical Studies, fol. 198 r. (R.L.19102r).
[CREDIT: akg Images / Universal Images Group, Rights Managed / For Education Use Only]
The Rule of Proportions by Leonardo Da Vinci.
[CREDIT: Science Source / Photo Researchers / Universal Images Group, Rights Managed / For Education Use Only]
From the Museum of Science, Boston, MA
©1996-2015
“Leonardo: Renaissance Man”
Leonardo the scientist bridged the gap between the shockingly unscientific medieval methods and our own trusty modern approach. His experiments in anatomy and the study of fluids, for example, absolutely blew away the accomplishments of his predecessors. Beginning with his first stay in Milan and accelerating around 1505, Leonardo became more and more wrapped up in his scientific investigations. The sheer range of topics that came under his inquiry is staggering: anatomy, zoology, botany, geology, optics, aerodynamics and hydrodynamics among others.
While greatly influenced by the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Leonardo, unlike many of his contemporaries, saw the limitations of seeking the truth solely in those writings or the Bible. Instead, he took the startling approach of actuallyobserving nature and asking deceptively simple scientific questions like, "How do birds fly?" To finish the bill, he then systematically recorded their solutions in his sketches.
Leonardo certainly had an uncanny ability to observe nature and record it. And to this he added a preternatural, even spooky determination. The first biographer of Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Giovi, wrote in 1520: "in the medical faculty he learned to dissect the cadavers of criminals under inhuman, disgusting conditions...because he wanted [to examine and] to draw the different deflections and reflections of limbs and their dependence upon the nerves and the joints. This is why he paid attention to the forms of even very small organs, capillaries and hidden parts of the skeleton."
In a study of cervical vertebra shown from different perspectives, Leonardo notes: "[Both] former and contemporary authors have produced written reports [about anatomy] in tormentingly long-winded and confused styles. However, through a concise portrayal from different perspectives, things are described definitively; and to avoid that my gift to mankind could be lost [to time], I teach the technique of reproducing things by printing." These remarks heralded the birth of a new method of scientific study: the systematic, descriptive method of the natural sciences, which was the predominant method of scientific study well into the 19th century.
As his curiosity took him in ever wilder directions, Leonardo always used this method of scientific inquiry: close observation, repeated testing of the observation, precise illustration of the subject object or phenomenon with brief explanatory notes. The result was volumes of remarkable notes on an amazing variety of topics, from the nature of the sun, moon and stars to the formation of fossils and, perhaps most notably, the mysteries of flight.
Roman Knowledge about the Human Body and Disease
©2014 BBC
The Romans didnot allow dissectionof human bodies, so they were limited in what they could find out about human anatomy. They alsorejectedmany Greek ideas about medicine. These factors slowed down their progress, but they continued to explore new ideas about the causes and prevention of disease.
Roman doctors learned a lot about the human body as they tended gladiators wounded in the amphitheatres. However, dissection of humans was forbidden in the Roman empire, so Roman anatomists such asGalenhad to rely mainly ondissections of animalsto further their knowledge. Galen recommended dissecting monkeys that walked on two legs, like men.
He did manage to work a little with the human body, and described how he hadhuman corpsesto dissect when he found a hanged criminal, and when a flood washed some bodies out of a cemetery. Despite this, he made various errors in his analysis of how bodies work.
Galen's books show a good knowledge of bone structure. He also studied the lungs, the muscles, the heart and blood and the nervous system. He conducted experiments on pigs, and when he cut the spinal cord in different places he realised how thenervous systemtakes messages from the brain to the muscles.
Galen accepted the Greek theory of thefour humoursas the cause of disease. However, the Romans did not continue the Greeks' investigations into disease and rejected Greek ideas, so Roman knowledge of disease did not progress.
“How Islamic inventors changed the world”
2The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.
10Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.
SOURCE:
Vallely, Paul. “How Islamic inventors changed the world.” The Independent, Sat. 11 Mar. 2006