Leonardo da Vinci as a Paradigm for Modern Clinical Research

In 2003 Thereza Wells (nee Crowe) began collaborating with the cardiothoracic surgeon, Francis Wells (Papworth Hospital), to study the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Mr Wells is regarded as one of the world’s leading heart surgeons and lectures and publishes extensively and internationally. Drawing on Thereza Crowe's expertise on Leonardo da Vinci, and Francis Wells’s medical expertise, they examined the drawings and notebooks anew to discover their relevance to science and medicine today.

The collaborative research reported in this paper contributed new knowledge to the field of Leonardo scholarship and showed its relevance to modern medicine. Leonardo explored how the heart functions by studying how it is formed. In an exercise of lateral thinking, he then applied his knowledge of hydrodynamics to work out how blood flows through the heart. Francis Wells’s expert knowledge of the anatomy and function of the heart confirmed that much of what Leonardo concluded through observation was correct. The article concludes that Leonardo was far more accurate in his findings than was previously assumed.