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

DR. NULAND: "Welcome to the 212th meeting of the Beaumont Medical Club and the First Annual John F. Fulton Lecture. "We have today received two communications which I should like to share with you. The first is a letter from the Queen Mother, which conveys her felicitous greetings (Fig. 1), and the second is a letter from the president of the Royal College of Physicians of England, Sir Douglas Black, which reads as follows: 'Dr. Kenneth Keele has told me of the inauguration of the 'John Fulton Fellowship in Medical History' at Yale. I think this is an excellent way of commemorating John Fulton's distinguished contribution to medical history, as well as, of course, to physiology. On behalf of the College I wish to express our best wishes for this important venture.' "Since the founding of the Beaumont Medical Club in 1920, our meetings have often been highlighted by important contributions to the study of medical history, just as they have been brightened and glistered by many a spellbinding yarn of scientific adventure. But never more so than this evening. "Sigmund Freud described Leonardo da Vinci as'A man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep.' Through the graciousness and generosity of one of the world's experts on Leonardo the Engineer, we will hear the saga of Leonardo the Anatomist. Let me tell you how it came about. "Exactly one year ago, loud and prolonged applause greeted the announcement, in this room, that Dr. Bern Dibner, of Norwalk, Connecticut, planned to honor the memory of his much-admired fellow-bibliophile by establishing, for the Beaumont Club, the John F. Fulton Fellowship in the History of Medicine. Those who have been with us in these past three days and those who are here now will know why Kenneth Keele was the logical, inevitable and most happy choice to be the first Fulton Fellow. It is also a logical, inevitable and very happy choice that Bern Dibner should introduce Dr. Keele as he gives the First Annual John F. Fulton Lecture. "There are those who know Dr. Dibner best as the inventor and electrical engineer who founded the Burndy Corporation in 1924. There are others who know him primarily as the tireless bibliophile who first created the magnificent Burndy Library in 1936, and who has made such valuable gifts of books to Brandeis University and to the Smithsonian Institution; there are those who know him as a scholar in the History of Science and a student of the work of Leonardo; and finally, there are those who know him as a patron of scientific culture. Bern Dibner is all of these; he is, in truth, a twentieth century humanist.