Leaf through a textbook, watch a wellness influencer or listen in at the gym, and it can feel as though the human body has already been mapped to exhaustion. Every muscle named, every nerve traced. E ...

The room is abuzz with conversation, questions and an occasional electric saw. At raised tables, trios of gowned men and women tweeze and scalpel their way through a human pelvis, sinew by sinew.

Leonardo da Vinci dissected some 30 cadavers in his lifetime, leaving behind a trove of beautiful—and accurate—anatomical drawings. Leonardo da Vinci's extensive studies of human anatomy were hundreds ...