The anatomy of the human body has been well-documented and thoroughly explicated in print for at least 100 years. Education pioneers, such as J.C.B. Grant, W.H. Hollinshead, and D.J. Cunningham (to name just a few), inspired the teaching of gross anatomy with enlightening but very different emphases and perspectives. The material results were profound, multiedition texts with successive titles like Grant's Method of Anatomy, Hollinshead's Textbook of Anatomy, and Cunningham's Textbook of Anatomy. These books expressed the personal cognitive framework of their creators for understanding how the body is constructed. Grant's approach was strikingly visual and emphasized a region-by-region study of the body. Hollinshead wrote brilliantly of function and reviewed anatomy in a combined systemic and regional approach. Cunningham's text, along with the more familiar Gray's Anatomy, is one of the few purely systemic approaches to the subject.
The era of extensive anatomy courses is over, however, largely because the curricular demands of medical school limit the time that can be devoted to anatomy and compel students to think about clinical applications of structure from the beginning of their training. As a result, the dominant texts of today tend to emphasize the regional approach of Grant, supplemented with clinical correlations and case studies. The days of eponymous book titles are now historical, with such titles being replaced by Clinically Oriented Anatomy or Clinical Anatomy, which also have matured through numerous revisions to become comprehensive references of gross anatomy.
Students need 'perspective' books in addition to comprehensive reference books. People acquire subject knowledge through two basic pathways, which sometimes are described as 'bottom-up' and 'top-down.' The bottom-up pathway is the method of assembling facts and mastering their relationships to arrive at some understanding of the subject in general. The top-down pathway, naturally, is the reverse a method of learning the organization of a subject before exercising its factual basis. In theory, these pathways enable the student to both understand and command a subject. A concise dose of the top-down approach can greatly improve the effectiveness of the bottom-up approach. That is the essential purpose of this book.
The present text expands two aspects of anatomic education that blend well together: embryology, and systemic anatomy. In many medical schools, embryology is taught either as a low-unit course to supplement anatomy or as a few lectures within the anatomy course.
The other design emphasis of this book is an expansion of systemic information. Many degree programs in the health professions now teach the body 'system-by-system,' which is an effective way of integrating the normal structure and function of a tissue complex with disease processes and medical management. Body systems are unified by function. The sequence of systems as presented in this book tries to balance the logic of body design with a minimum redundancy of coverage. A body-wide system, circulation, leads off as a guide to all body regions. The other organ systems follow, given their tightly related embryologies, functions, and relatively simple (anatomically, at least) innervation schemes. There is no separate chapter on the endocrine organs; rather, they are discussed in the appropriate embryologic passages. The peripheral nervous system and the musculoskeletal system are interrelated both spatially and functionally. Although the nature of how they function is similar from one region to the next, the number of named nerves, muscles, bones, and joints is quite large, so these chapters are relatively long. To maintain the pace of embryologic discourse, they are placed after the organ chapters.
Lastly, a brief chapter on skin and superficial fascia concludes the book. This is an awkward topic for a systemic book of gross anatomy, because a structure of great clinical relevance, the mammary gland, grows within a body-wide system of integument that otherwise is more microscopic (histologic) than macroscopic. The breast must be covered in an anatomy book, but as a modified sweat gland it is appropriately placed in a chapter, albeit confined, on the integument.
The era of extensive anatomy courses is over, however, largely because the curricular demands of medical school limit the time that can be devoted to anatomy and compel students to think about clinical applications of structure from the beginning of their training. As a result, the dominant texts of today tend to emphasize the regional approach of Grant, supplemented with clinical correlations and case studies. The days of eponymous book titles are now historical, with such titles being replaced by Clinically Oriented Anatomy or Clinical Anatomy, which also have matured through numerous revisions to become comprehensive references of gross anatomy.
Students need 'perspective' books in addition to comprehensive reference books. People acquire subject knowledge through two basic pathways, which sometimes are described as 'bottom-up' and 'top-down.' The bottom-up pathway is the method of assembling facts and mastering their relationships to arrive at some understanding of the subject in general. The top-down pathway, naturally, is the reverse a method of learning the organization of a subject before exercising its factual basis. In theory, these pathways enable the student to both understand and command a subject. A concise dose of the top-down approach can greatly improve the effectiveness of the bottom-up approach. That is the essential purpose of this book.
The present text expands two aspects of anatomic education that blend well together: embryology, and systemic anatomy. In many medical schools, embryology is taught either as a low-unit course to supplement anatomy or as a few lectures within the anatomy course.
The other design emphasis of this book is an expansion of systemic information. Many degree programs in the health professions now teach the body 'system-by-system,' which is an effective way of integrating the normal structure and function of a tissue complex with disease processes and medical management. Body systems are unified by function. The sequence of systems as presented in this book tries to balance the logic of body design with a minimum redundancy of coverage. A body-wide system, circulation, leads off as a guide to all body regions. The other organ systems follow, given their tightly related embryologies, functions, and relatively simple (anatomically, at least) innervation schemes. There is no separate chapter on the endocrine organs; rather, they are discussed in the appropriate embryologic passages. The peripheral nervous system and the musculoskeletal system are interrelated both spatially and functionally. Although the nature of how they function is similar from one region to the next, the number of named nerves, muscles, bones, and joints is quite large, so these chapters are relatively long. To maintain the pace of embryologic discourse, they are placed after the organ chapters.
Lastly, a brief chapter on skin and superficial fascia concludes the book. This is an awkward topic for a systemic book of gross anatomy, because a structure of great clinical relevance, the mammary gland, grows within a body-wide system of integument that otherwise is more microscopic (histologic) than macroscopic. The breast must be covered in an anatomy book, but as a modified sweat gland it is appropriately placed in a chapter, albeit confined, on the integument.
Product Details
- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 1 edition (February 23, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0781768888
- ISBN-13: 978-0781768887
- Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches