Leonardo da Vinci's 'Anatomia Naturale'. The inaugural John F. Fulton lecture. Yale University School of Medicine November 3, 1978.

I am very appreciative that I have been given this opportunity by the John Fulton Committee of the Beaumont Club at Yale University to honour John Fulton in this the first John Fulton Lecture. It is now twenty years since I came to know and work with Dr. John Fulton here in New Haven, to admire him and his wife Lucia, and to enjoy the privilege of speaking to the Beaumont Club. It is twelve years since I met Dr. Bern Dibner to whose generosity in endowing the Fulton Fellowship I owe my presence here this evening. We first met at the Leonardo Symposium held in Los Angeles. It is therefore with a deep feeling of privileged affection that I welcome this opportunity of speaking to you this evening on Leonardo da Vinci's 'Anatomia Naturale'. By a fascinating chance of history Columbus was exploring the New World across the Atlantic ocean where we now stand at the same time as Leonardo da Vinci was exploring a new world inside our bodies. Leonardo's approach to the investigation of all natural phenomena was unique, and anatomy was no exception. The object of this lecture is to demonstrate what Leonardo meant by'Anatomia Naturale', the Nature of Anatomy. For him anatomy was not only that'descriptive' anatomy which we find in modern textbooks, but naturalistic representation of organs designed to illustrate their functions, particularly their movements, as well as their inert shapes. In such representations his imagination played a large part. The many aspects of his approach give us invaluable insight into the multifaceted jewel of Leonardo's unique artistic and scientific mind. I shall try to show you not only how Leonardo illustrated anatomy but also how his Anatomy illustrates Leonardo. Two obstacles prevent our full appreciation of Leonardo's anatomical drawings; one emotional, the other intellectual. Leonardo himself experienced the emotional obstacle. He expresses his repugnance to dissection thus: 'Though you have a love for such things you will perhaps be impeded by your stomach' [1]. Our intellectual difficulty consists of casting our minds back some 500 years into the anatomical context within which Leonardo worked. This context is most concisely summed up in the contents of the first textbook published in the Italian language, the Fasciculo de Medicina [2]. The first edition in Italian was published in 1493 when Leonardo was 41 years old. At the end of it is an Italian translation of the Anatomy of Mondino. Ignorant of Latin and Greek, Leonardo used this work extensively. The Anatomy by Mondino is prefaced by an illustration which cannot have failed to attract Leonardo's attention (Fig. 1). It would drive home to him-as it does to us-how the