Da Vinci’s code for surgeons

It was he who started dissecting in solitude the stinking corpses of executed criminals and indigent hospital patients, so that he might better comprehend the body’s mysteries, even before the era of Renaissance. Born in 1452, he was at once a painter, architect, mathematician, city planner, biologist and researcher in optics, while at the same time a civil, military and hydraulic engineer. He was a gifted athlete, a fine musician and a talented singer, but above all he was overall a moral philosopher whose insights into nature and the human conditions were often profound.