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nydus/The Notebooks of Leonardo da VinciPublic
Page 664 of 1234
Table of Contents

XI.

19 1/2 centimetres. The upper figures are slightly washed with Indian ink. On the back of this drawing is the text No. 1140.].

Thus, in twelve entire figures, you will have set before you the cosmography of this lesser world on the same plan as, before me, was adopted by Ptolemy in his cosmography; and so I will afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into provinces; then I will speak of the function of each part in every direction, putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man, as regards his movements from place to place, by means of his different parts. And thus, if it please our great Author, I may demonstrate the nature of men, and their customs in the way I describe his figure.

And remember that the anatomy of the nerves will not give the position of their ramifications, nor show you which muscles they branch into, by means of bodies dissected in running water or in lime water; though indeed their origin and starting point may be seen without such water as well as with it. But their ramifications, when under running water, cling and unite—just like flat or hemp carded for spinning—all into a skein, in a way which makes it impossible to trace in which muscles or by what ramification the nerves are distributed among those muscles.

799.

THE ARRANGEMENT OF ANATOMY

First draw the bones, let us say, of the arm, and put in the motor muscle from the shoulder to the elbow with all its lines. Then proceed in the same way from the elbow to the wrist. Then from the wrist to

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