SOURCE: “The Manuscripts,” in The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1928, pp. 167-212.

In the following essay, McCurdy offers a detailed overview of the contents of Leonardo's manuscripts, commenting on the diversity of the writings, which focus on such areas as optics, astronomy, botany, geology, perspective, light and shadow, and equine and human anatomy. McCurdy also states that the scientific thought present in these writings presages the later discoveries of great scientists such as Bacon and Newton.

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It is almost impossible to make any attempt to estimate the original number or the bulk of Leonardo's manuscripts. Antonio de Beatis, the secretary of the Cardinal of Aragon, who visited him at Cloux, speaks of seeing there ‘an infinite number of volumes all in the vulgar tongue.’ Under the terms of Leonardo's will all his books were bequeathed to Francesco Melzi and by him they were taken back...