Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci was (and is) a famous
Italian artist as well as a physician, and anatomist. He made
over 1,500 drawings from cadaver dissections. Included in his
studies were muscles of the tongue, the larynx, and the thoracic
cavity. Da Vinci’s major anatomical text was Quaderni
d’anatomia, completed about the year 1500. Leonardo’s also
performed many scientific experiments that were in advance of
his time. By squeezing the lungs of a dead goose, he showed it
could produce tones from its larynx. He also described
articulation function of the mouth, lips and teeth, and assigned
phonetic terms to acoustic signals. Da Vinci’s theorizing was
grounded in ancient times. He subscribed to the theory of
ventricular localization and adopted the theory of animal
spirits, believing that the spirits traveled across the nerves
to the ventricles. He studied the location and anatomy and based
on his findings he attributed functions to the separate
ventricles that differed from those of Nemesius, a mediev