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FIRST MAKE AN ANATOMY - Leonardo da Vinci  as a paradigm for modern clinical research
         F. Wells, Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, UKT MAAN ANATOMY - Leonardo da Vinci  as a paradigm for modern clinical research
            Born 551 years ago, the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary and a local shepherdess, Leonardo da Vinci became a phenomenon in his own time despite lacking any formal education.

            He was apprenticed to Verocchio in Florence aged around 14 years. He rapidly established himself as an extraordinary talent with an exceptional application in all of his endeavours.

            The hallmark of his intellectual contributions was an ever open and enquiring mind. Coupled with an inexhaustible appetite for experiment and investigation he was able to make deeply significant contributions in many areas of science and Art.

            I will endeavour to demonstrate the way this marvelous mind went about his business and the power of pure observation and deduction to make many original observations and translate form to function.

            The first to record the presence and relevance of the Bronchial circulation, the Septum Marginal Trabeculum and the closure mechanism of the Aortic valve, this amazing researcher made many highly significant contributions to Anatomy and Physiology which remain relevant today.

            He described the first mock circulation and even devised a functioning aortic valve model.  All of this was supported by the development of his own experimental method and scientific apparatus that still acts as the finest example imaginable, of sheer determination in the completion of a task.

            All of his work is prefaced by the question that he wishes to answer. If meaningful progress is to be made in scientific understanding this principle is as relevant today as then. Leonardo, in addition to his marvellous works in science and engineering also laid down many of the principles of the philosophy of science.

            In his own time Leonardo was known not only as a painter, but also as an author, a philosopher and a naturalist. There can be no doubt that in more than one department his principles and discoveries were infinitely more in accord with the teachings of modern science, than with the views of his contemporaries.  For this reason his extraordinary gifts and merits are far more likely to be appreciated in our own time than they could have been during the preceeding centuries.  He has been unjustly accused of squandering his powers, by beginning a variety of studies and then, having hardly begun, throwing them aside.  The truth is that the labours of three centuries have hardly sufficed for the elucidation of some of the problems, which occupied his mighty mind.

Alexander von Humboldt has borne witness that "he was the first to start on the road towards the point where all the impressions of our senses converge in he idea of the Unity of Nature."

            Taking the time to reflect upon this great mans' work may allow us to think again about our own approach to science and research.