Word: vinci
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...Leonardo was the greatest artist in the world." So begins Leonardo da Vinci, by A. & M. Provensen (Viking; $14.95). "He was also an astronomer, an architect, and an engineer who made hundreds of inventions." Granted, but how can a child be shown the breadth and scope of a genius five centuries removed? The Provensens have performed the impossible, and they have done it in twelve pages. Their solution is worthy of Leonardo himself: a popup book designed to show a movable church, a flying machine, a winged man, engineering and anatomical studies, a three-dimensional model of the heavens...
...that the brain is connected to a network of two types of nerve fibers, one set controlling motion, the other, sensation. This knowledge was lost in the Middle Ages, and superstition again took hold. Only when taboos against dissection were lifted during the Renaissance did thinkers like Leonardo da Vinci once again understand pain in terms of the nervous system...
...many years, atherosclerosis chokes off the flow of life-sustaining blood. The disease, resulting from the buildup of fibrous material, or plaque, in the arteries, has been killing people for centuries. Scientists have found plaque in the arteries of an Egyptian mummy dating from approximately 100 B.C. Leonardo da Vinci described atherosclerosis in his Dell'Anatomia, identifying it as the cause of a "slow death without any fever" that afflicts the elderly. It was not until this century that scientists began to realize that this disease of advancing age actually begins in youth, especially in cultures where the diet...
...current exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings at New York City's Metropolitan Museum is, one need hardly point out, a must for almost anyone who is interested in either drawings or bodies. All the same, it is not the easiest of shows. Its predecessor, the Met's 1981 exhibition of his studies of landscape and water and plants (lent, like this one, from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle), was more open to the nonspecialist, if only because more people have mused on water currents or leaves than on the maxillary sinus...
...worst enemy of truth, according to Boorstin, is to keep knowledge secret. Warlike states, monopolistic guilds, and closemouthed alchemists all conspired to leave outsiders in the dark. Even Leonardo da Vinci held back the progress of anatomy by keeping to himself his detailed drawings and studies of the human body. "...Despite his consummate art, his industry, and his unexcelled powers of observation, Leonardo added only to his own knowledge, and little or nothing to the anatomical knowledge of his time. Nor were his own observations enriched as they might have been. For, as we shall see, the public forum...