More than 500 years ago, the pent-ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci, wrote this after performing two autopsies, one on an old man and one on a two year old child. “The old who enjoy good health die through lack of sustenance . . . brought about by the passage to the mesariaic veins becoming continually restricted by the thickening of the skin of these veins; and the process continues until it effects the capillary vein, which are first to close up altogether.”
He further attributed this thickening as to why the old get cold more easily than the young and why the skin of the old changes color and texture.
Thusly, did Leonardo describe what today we refer to as ‘artherasclorosis’ using Newtonian scientific method centuries before was ever described (and centuries before Newton was even born). And thusly, the most celebrated of the Renaissance men contributed to the rise of rational thought at the expense of superstition, dogma, and the Platonic tradition, so steeped in the derivative.