Leonardo Da Vinci, the Great Innovator in Cardiovascular Biomechanics

Abstract

Five hundred years after his death, the figure of Leonardo da Vinci continues transmitting his tireless desire to know and learn. Leonardo is the symbol of a century in which progress impacted, shattering the thickness of dogmas. In the Quattrocento, the doors were definitely opened, ideas spread and still feed us, clear our path and enlighten us. Florence, in Leonardo’s time, was the Silicon Valley of the Renaissance. Leonardo studied the dynamics of water flow in rivers, using colors to show the flow patterns, thus defining the continuous stress on the side walls of the river. He determined, with different colors, the flow characteristics in the center and near the edges of the rivers and extrapolated those findings to the blood that flows in the arteries. Leonardo studied the coronary artery and veins, heart and bronchia in detail and made several assumptions about the cause of atherosclerosis, based on his previous hydrodynamic studies of water flow. Leonardo theorized that diseases were derived from some imperfection in the structure of the human body and addressed the issue of atherosclerosis and its correlation with aging. He accurately described a case of portal hypertension with liver cirrhosis as well as pulmonary circulation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Leonardo was the great innovator in Biomechanics of the cardiovascular system: heart, lungs and circulation.