Between 15010 and 1512, Leonardo da Vinci drew the human fetus with startling and unprecedented accuracy.
According to Arizona State Univeristy’s Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Leonardo is regarded as “the very first in history to correctly depict the human fetus in its proper position within the womb. He was also the first to expertly draw the uterine artery and the vascular system of the cervix and vagina.”
Scientific advances, beginning with Leonardo and culminating in the ultrasound, have played no small part in helping us recognize the fetus’ human face. These chalk and ink images, then, should be seen as a minor milestone in the acknowledgment of our brotherhood with the unborn.
January 28th, 2013 | 4:43 pm
Such inaccurate depictions. By 1972 we were enlightened enough to know that it was actually a “lump of tissue”…
January 28th, 2013 | 7:45 pm
These pictures must have been drawn from autopsy dissections for Medical Science! Amazing, the time it was done!
January 28th, 2013 | 11:47 pm
By what means did the artist come by his view of the unborn child within the womb?
January 29th, 2013 | 3:42 am
Most of us will have read at school Aulus Gellius’s description of Embryonic development in Attic Nights (3.10.7-8)
To refresh your memories, “”For,” says he, “when the life-giving seed has been introduced into the female womb, in the first seven days it is compacted and coagulated and rendered fit to take shape. Then afterwards in the fourth hebdomad the rudimentary male organ, the head, and the spine which is in the back, are formed. But in the seventh hebdomad, as a rule, that is, by the forty-ninth day,” says he, “the entire embryo is formed in the womb.” He says that this power also has been observed in that number, that before the seventh month neither male nor female child can be born in health and naturally, and that those which are in the womb the most regular time are born two hundred and seventy-three days after conception, that is, not until the beginning of the fortieth hebdomad”
January 29th, 2013 | 9:51 am
“Despite their vegetarianism, Pythagoreans had to forswear eating beans because eating beans is a form of cannibalism. A close look at the inside of a bean reveals that each one contains a small, embryonic human being (or human bean, as the case may be).” – Donald Palmer, “Looking at Philosophy”
January 30th, 2013 | 8:02 am
At conception, the baby is smaller than a grain of sugar, but the instructions are present for all that this person will ever become. In week 2, the baby attaches and burrows securely into the wall of its mother’s womb. In week 3, the baby’s blood vessels and sex cells form. Foundations of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system are laid. In week 4, the baby’s heart has begun to beat. (and the baby is still only the size of the fingernail on your little finger — amazing!) Eyes, ears and lungs begin to form. In week 5, tiny arms and legs appear, as well as the baby’s face. The baby’s blood is now separate from the mother’s. In week 6, tiny fingers and toes develop. The baby’s brain is divided into 3 parts for emotion and language, hearing, and seeing. By week 8, all organs are in place and only time is needed to grow. The baby begins spontaneous movement and is now well proportioned, about the size of a thumb. I have been in a Crisis Pregnancy Center where women have access to ultrasound in their sixth week of pregnancy and the sound of the baby’s heartbeat picked up by the ultrasound machine reverberates throughout the office loud and clear! THIS IS A HUMAN BEING! If a baby in its mother’s womb is not safe from violence, where on earth can we expect to find peace? (medical facts sources: Carlson, B., Human Embryology & Developmental Biology, Toronto: Mosby Publication; 3rd edition, 2004. Moore, K. and Persaud, T., The Developing Human, Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th Edition, Philadelphia: W. B. Sanders, 1998. O’Rahilly, R. and Muller, F., Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd Edition, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2001.)
January 30th, 2013 | 11:30 am
MO K
Aulus Gellius’s 2nd century account, which I quoted above was pretty close to the mark and he took it from Marcus Terentius Varro, who wrote in the middle of the 1st century BCE.
January 31st, 2013 | 2:22 am
One could be forgiven for asking: was there anything that Leonardo couldn’t do? under the definition of polymath his name/picture should be mandatory in every dictionary!
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