Interesting quotes

An excerpt from "History and the Social Web" by August C. Krey. Chapter "The rebirth of the medical profession"
And you who say that it is better to see the dissection than such drawings (drawings of bodies), you would speak well if it were possible to see all these things which are demostrated in such drawings in a single specimen, in which you, with all your genius, will not see and will not obtain knowledge for which I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all other organs, consuming with very minutest particles all the flesh which surrounded these veins, without making them bloody except with insensible sangunification of the capilary veins; and one body did not suffice for so long a time, so that it was necessary to proceed by degrees with so many bodies that the complete knowledge might be fulfilled, which I twice repeated in order to see the difference.
And if you do have love for such matters, you will perhaps be impeded by the stomach, and if that does not impede you, you will be perhaps impeded by the fear of living in the night hours in the company of such quartered and flayed corpses fearful to look at; and if that does not impede you, you will perhaps lack the good draughtmanship which belongs to such a demonstration; and if you have the draughtmanship it will not be accompanied by the perspective, and if it is accompanied, you will lack the calculation of the forces and power of the muscles; ad perhaps you will lack the patience, so that you will not be diligent.
As to whether all these things have been in me or not, the hundred and twenty books composed by me will answer yes or no."
Leonardo Da Vinci (1519)