Medical Illustration

Leonardo Da Vinci, Anatomy of human body

Mark 1:40-45
Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean”...

The Renaissance Master Leonardo da Vinci was always universally recognized as a genius even when he was not fully understood. He was obviously a master painter and sculptor. We can gather that assessment by viewing his finished artworks housed churches, museums and monasteries all over the world. But what about his unfinished work? What about his sketches, ideas, musings and writings? If we were to view those we would get a better vantage point into how Leonardo's brain operated without restraints, censors and need for commission. Luckily we do possess Leonardo's notebooks. They reveal Leonardo to be polymath, having expertise and visionary insight into such diverse subjects as painting, sculpture, architecture, music, mathematics, engineering, weapon and mechanical design, anatomy, geology, cartography and botany. Leonardo's genius sprouted from the fertile soil of a mind that asked questions. After asking questions he asked more questions. Leonardo Da Vinci was the Scientific Method personified. Leonardo was always studying, investigating and documenting the world around him... and the one within him. In the pursuit to understand and illustrate the human being, he sought to understand the workings within the human body. Da Vinci documented the skeletal structure that houses the mind, the muscles and their movement, the womb with internal fetal development and the organ of the heart. Leonardo dissected, analyzed and documented the details of cadavers and in doing so furthered the discipline that we now know as Medical Illustration. The writer of the Gospel of Mark also uses medical illustrations. When he tells the story of Jesus' healing of the leper he is using an illustrative tool that he has been building throughout the course of the book. Mark documents the skeletal structure of Jesus ministry (before the crucifixion) as being composed of two major parts: preaching and healing. Jesus healed people's physical ailments and preached about their spiritual ailments. Without oversimplifying the matter the reader can take notice that there is a parallel between the two. Yet the two parts are not separated by time; there is not a point when Jesus only practices a "healing ministry" and stops to begin his "preaching ministry." The two occur in the same stories throughout his ministry. If it were not already evident, Mark frames it to make it emphatic: these two halves were different views of the same thing. The Gospel is the good news that God is interested in redeeming the whole man. When Mark shows Jesus healing a person's condition it is to highlight the parallel antidote that he provides for their spiritual condition. So when Jesus cleansed the man of the all-consuming physical disease of Leprosy it was a medical illustration of Christ's ability to cleanse us all from the all-consuming spiritual disease of Sin. 

Mind

Leonardo Da Vinci, Study for the Sforza Monument

...Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” As soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed...

The treatment and perception of Leprosy has changed a lot since Jesus' time. First of all, we have 

Leonardo Da Vinci, View of a Skull

another name for it. Doctors now call it Hansen's disease. Unlike the ancients, we no longer look at Leprosy as fundamentally being a skin disease. Sure it heavily involves the skin and the external body but its original point of impact is something far more internal. Leprosy is a disease that ends with the skin but starts with the mind. By the mind I don't just mean the brain housed in the skull but rather the full reach of the brain that stretches throughout the body: the nervous system. Leprosy starts with an infection caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. So when Jesus exerted his will to cleanse the leper he was both reversing the ravaging affects on his epidermis and also refreshing the nervous system that spread the infection. Those looking at this leper's external body would see that his skin had been cleansed but those studying his internal body would also discover that his mind had been renewed. But as an evangelist Mark isn't only concerned about this leper's physical mind because the Gospel isn't just concerned with our physical mind. Like the Apostle Paul, Mark is concerned with the spiritual condition of the leper's mind. Mark alludes to Jesus' concern cleansing the ailment that afflicts the leper's mind. Like Leprosy, Sin is a disease that afflicts the mind. Paul further illuminates Jesus' means of spiritual healing in his letter to the Romans when he states, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed bythe renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is thatgood and acceptable and perfect will of God." When Christ heals us of our sin he starts with our mind. 

Muscle

Leonardo Da Vinci, sketches of muscles and skeletons

...And He strictly warned him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them”...

Leprosy is a disease of muscle and movement. It restricts muscles and movement by cutting off muscles and movement. At least it was that way in Jesus' time. The ancients viewed Leprosy as a disease that eventually led to fingers, noses and other members and muscle structures falling off. 

Leonardo Da Vinci,
Studies of the Arm showing the
Movements made by the Biceps

They understood that Leprosy was a communicable disease so they set up various societal rules and structures to restrict the spread of the disease by restricting the movement of the infected. In the Torah (Leviticus)we find Moses and Aaron sharing Divine Law concerning the quarantine of lepers. For hundreds of years lepers were banished to the outskirts of Jewish cities. They were also commanded to dress the part and warn travelers of their infected status from afar off. These Levitical commands did not end in excluding the infected but rather they also incorporated their return to society if by chance they were healed. Once the required rituals were performed with the priests and the community's fear of losing limbs was assuaged, the former leper could be restored as a member of society. We now understand that Leprosy does not necessarily make one's limbs fall off. Leprosy moves from the nervous system and numbs regions of the epidermis. The leper may injure the same body part several times and not feel any pain. The result us that body parts are eventually worn away 
or break off from repeated damage. Like Leprosy, Sin  is a disease that spreads to all of the members of our body and affects our movement. Sin us both contagious and eventually numbing to the affects if sin. After Jesus tends to the leper's physical affliction he brings his spiritual 

Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomical drawing of a hand

health to the forefront by asking him to observe the commandments. Christ asks the leper to do what was required of him in the Law for him to be readmitted into society. He wants the whole community to know that this man has dealt with the contagious condition that affected everyone. Then Jesus follows it with a command of his own. The command that Jesus gives is an instance if what we term "the Messianic Secret." We will go into explaining that a little later, but so far there are several points in thus narrative that have parallel spiritual applications. As Christians we follow the precedent of ancient Judaism in its following of the Torah and other Hebrew Scriptures (which we call the Old Testament). To these we add the thoughts if Jesus and his initial followers the Apostles (which we call the New Testament). Yet these cannot be fully seen as a part one and part two or a replacement of something passé. Rather both must be seen as complimentary: Jesus is the full revelation of the God testified to in the Old Testament. So when Jesus heals the leper he requires that he do what God said in the Old Testament. Jesus' healing was the missing element in the Old Testament ritual. Christ's touch was the link between the command that the leper be placed outside of society and the practices for his eventual return to society. Similarly, when we sin we affect more than ourselves. We sin against God and more often than not we affect those around us. When we learn to deal with and abstain from our struggles we must remember that we not only have to be reconnected to God but also those that we have sinned against. We must seek their forgiveness. We must restore our relationships. At all points Jesus is the link that brings us from rejection in our relationships to reconnection. When Christ heals us of our sin it allows to move closer to God. 

Womb



Leonardo Da Vinci, Study of a Womb

...However, he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the matter...

Since it is caused by bacteria, Leprosy is highly contagious especially with skin to skin contact? But what about in the womb? Can mothers with Leprosy spread the disease to their children? TheCenters for Disease Control asked this very question in 2013. 

Views of a Fetus in the Womb

Working from research gathered from the United Nation's World Health Organization, they determined that a fetus cannot contract leprosy while in the womb; however without preventative treatment the child can contract Leprosy after birth from skin to skin contact with the mother. This is where the parallels between the spiritual and physical conditions fall apart. Sin actually is a genetic disease that we are predisposed to from birth. As King David shared in the Psalms, we are born with Sin. It is the Original Sin that we inherit from the forefathers of our human species. Even if we were quarantined from our sinful parents, the inclination to sin still flows through our spiritual veins. Sadly this proclivity to disobey God continues beyond the point where we are saved. Christ took the punishment for our sin and endowed us with the Holy Spirit but at the end of the day following Jesus is summed up in willfully and consistently following Jesus. Following Jesus means doing what he says. So after the former leper was physically healed by Jesus he followed it by displaying his need for spiritual healing.  Jesus commanded him to not speak of the healing and he disobeyed. He went from endangering the community by spreading Leprosy to endangering Jesus by spreading his fame. Normally we might look at this as a good thing: he was an accidental evangelist. But Jesus wanted obedience more than he wanted popularity. Sometimes I fear that our zeal for evangelism and church growth may come at the expense of acutely listening to and comprehending Jesus' message. When we don't listen to what Jesus says then we won't know what Jesus wants and we will break the very commandments of the one that we think that we are representing. The leper only required a onetime encounter with Jesus to rid him of his bodily sickness but his soul sickness would require a daily treatment. It would require a relationship with Jesus. Jesus heals us from the deteriorative punishment of sin and allows us to return to community with God but this balm is fully active to treating flare ups when we daily seek the counsel of the Holy Spirit through the daily application of God's Word. When Jesus heals of our sin it is a long-term process of a lifelong condition.

Heart


Leonardo Da Vinci, Illustration of a heart

...so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in deserted places; and they came to Him from every direction.

It is said that before Leonardo Da Vinci dissected, studied and illustrated the human heart it was popularly thought two only have two chambers. We now know that there are four. Being that I am not a cardiac specialist or medical history expert I cannot fully confirm this. I just heard a guy that was smarter than me say it on a professionally made video. It is said that Leonardo made a cast of an animal heart and ran a medium through it that hardened. With the resulting model he was able to create glass replica of the heart (with the exact same openings and chambers as the real one). From here he ran an experiment where he mixed water with grass seed and watched as it flowed through the components of the glass heart. The see through glass and translucent water allowed him to see the path of the visible grass seed. Thereby Da Vinci was able to study the movement of blood, see the composition of cardiac chambers and understand the nature if the human heart. I have discussed Leprosy's detrimental effects on the mind/nervous system, muscles/external organs and the danger that it poses to offspring of its victims. In addition to these Leprosy attacks the respiratory system and eyes. All of this is in addition to the obvious damage it does to the skin. However in all of my reading I have not discovered any affect that it has on the heart. Yet Jesus' healing of the leper involved repairs to his heart. Jesus' spiritual healing always involves the heart. Sin is a disease that affects the heart. By heart I do not mean the literal, central organ that controls the flow of blood but the metaphorical, spiritual mechanism that controls the flow of love. Sin shows our love for God and others. Like Leonardo Da Vinci, Jesus could understand the human heart because he could see inside of it. He knew the leper's heart and he knows our heart because he also has a heart. Even before Jesus took physical form, God the Son had a heart. Deep within the core of the Eternal God there lies love… so much so that the Apostle John claimed that "God is love." Sin not only affects our hearts but it affects God's heart. The separation between God and Mankind called Sin so grieved Christ that he was willing to die to remove it. Jesus took our place and relieved the wrath due to all sinners... though he was without sin. He lovingly took our plague and healed us. That is the end of the story of Jesus and the leper.  Jesus takes the leper's place on the outskirts of town as an outcast. In the beginning of story the leper stood outside of the town for fear that his sickness would kill those that he would encounter. In the end the leper's telling of Jesus' miracles (after he was commanded not to do so by Jesus) forces Jesus to live in the outskirts as an outcast due to the danger of being killed by any religious authorities that he might encounter.  That is the story of the leper, you, me and all of those who are saved by the blood of Christ. We are saved by a hardship that was placed upon him. We are saved by him taking the punishment of our disobedience. When Jesus healed from Sin it was through his living, self sacrifice.