Medical Origins and Context
In 2011 researchers at Imperial College London analyzed the drawing to identify that the image demonstrates that the subject has a likely groin disorder (left sided inguinal hernia). This is a common condition typically treated by surgery in the modern-era, but may also reflect that Leonardo da Vinci may have based the Vitruvian Man on a cadaver who may have died from this condition.
Read more about this topic: Vitruvian Man
Famous quotes containing the words medical, origins and/or context:
“Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer’s character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)