Hi All, Did you know that in the middle ages it was commonly thought that the arteries contained animal spirits while veins contained natural spirits? Nicholas of Solero, in the 12th century said “ All the arteries from the Heart, all of the veins from the liver”. Leonardo though, argued that the structure of veins and arteries suggested that they all “arise from the heart”. As usual Leonardo was way ahead of his time. Had tools such as VH Dissector and Procedures Consult been available in the 15th century it may have meant that Leonardo needn’t have conducted his 30 year anatomical study of corpses and perhaps could have set to inventing effective means to harness renewable energy or ways to stop soap stars from making records.

Before we berate the good people from Touch of life Technologies and Elsevier for missing the boat by about 500 years, we should congratulate them on their products. I have discussed VH dissector previously on this blog but Procedures Consult deserves a mention also. Procedures Consult is an online multimedia resource that helps physicians, medical residents and students learn, perform and test their knowledge of the most frequent medical procedures. The site currently contains over 200 separate procedures including actual procedure videos, text and animation. If you haven’t had a look at it yet you should.

I guess one good thing about Procedures Consult not being around in the early 16th century is that we can be sure that Lisa del Giaconda’s enigmatic smile and the perfect tension between the fingertips of God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are not due to them just having watched the Procedures Consult video on Trigger Point Injection.

Marcos