R: Gastrointestinal tract and bladder. V: Gastrointestinal tract and stomach, liver and spleen

The drawings and notes here are based on the dissection of an old man, whose death Leonardo had witnessed in a hospital in Florence in the winter of 1507-8. Above, Leonardo depicts the gastrointestinal tract: Leonardo includes the appendix, seen again in the detail at lower right of the page – the first description of this structure in Western medicine. Below, the liver is shown in cross-section, with the stomach and spleen. The principal drawing on the verso of this sheet is a fine representation of the gastrointestinal tract. The remainder of the page is concerned with the flow of urine from the kidneys through the ureters into the bladder. At upper right are cross-sections of the ureterovesical valve, which prevents the passage of urine from the bladder back into the ureters. The figures at lower right show the bladder with the body in various positions. Leonardo intended to publish an illustrated treatise on human anatomy, and by the end of his life he claimed to have performed 30 human dissections. But his treatise was never completed, and the work of one of the great anatomists of the Renaissance thus had no impact on the discipline. Text adapted from Leonardo da Vinci: A life in drawing, London, 2018