Origins of Anatomical Names: Anatomy

Origins of Anatomical Names:

Anatomy is defined as the study of structure which is derived from a Greek word and means to cut. It was first discovered and practiced over in Alexandria, Egypt with one of the greatest anatomy teachers being Herophilus. Herophilus was also one of the first anatomists to dissect both animals and humans. With much of his work being so influential, other anatomists sought after his work for the purposes of learning.

An example of this people was Galen, dubbed the Prince of Physicians, whose work went on for 1500 years with no one questioning him. Later on, Vesalius, known as the Reformer of Anatomy, questioned Galen's work and proceeded to analyze it. The greatest anatomist of all time, Leornado da Vinci, dissected bodies and became intrigued with the structure and function of man. Leornado also believed that balancing the humorous would be possible by pulling blood out of a body.

The classic work on the subject of Anatomy of the Human Body was by Henry Gray. He is credited for publishing an English-language human anatomy textbook known as Henry Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body (or in short Gray's Anatomy). First published under the title Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical in the United Kingdom in 1858, and the book was also published in the United States the following year. Gray contracted smallpox from his dying nephew and died at the age of 34, while studying the anatomical effects of infectious diseases. His death was shortly after the publication of the 1860 second edition and his work on his was continued by others culminating in the publication of the 39th British edition on November 24, 2004. According to Henry Gray's research, the human body is divided into five major regions which are the head, neck, trunk (chest and abdominal regions), upper extremity and lower extremity (Dawn252, 2009).

More learning than judgment has been displayed in tracing the history of the origin of anatomy. The oldest anatomical exposition in existence is an Egyptian papyrus believed to have been written around 1600 BC. The paper shows that the heart, vessels, kidneys, liver, spleen, urethras and bladder were recognized with the blood-vessels coming from the heart. The exposition also describes other vessels with some carrying air and other mucus; while the breath of life is carried by two vessels to the right ear are said to carry and the breath of death by two vessels to the left ear ("History of Anatomy," n.d.).

The cultivation of anatomical knowledge been attributed to Hippocrates who thought to be the creator of the science of anatomy. However, of all the works credited to Hippocrates, only of them are genuine because most of them were written by subsequent authors of the same name. Hippocrates of notions on the structure of the human body was superficial and erroneous apart from his notions on osteology which were somewhat accurate. Aristotle, who was born 384 years before the Christian era, composed several works on anatomy most of which are now lost. A combination of a sum of 800 talents and the help various intelligent Greece and Asian assistants helped Aristotle's researches which culminated in the discovery of what is known as Aristotelian Anatomy.

Some of the words used in human anatomy have fascinating origins. The term aorta has an uncertain derivation with Hippocrates being the first one recorded to mention the word around the 5th century BC. Hippocrates used the word (which may have come from combination of Greek 'aer' which means air and 'tepeo' which means to hold) to describe the trachea and its branches in consideration of the windpipe's function. The word biceps comes from the Latin words 'bis' meaning twice and caput which means head. Its brachii is basically a muscle with two heads or origins.

Another word derived from Latin is coronary from the word 'corona' meaning garland, wealth, crown or boundary. Arranged vertically instead of encircling the cranium, the coronal suture is reminiscent of the style favored by Roman emperors for the wearing of a garland. The Greek word for almond, almygdala, is a mass of gray matter positioned within the temporal lobe of the cerebrum. It is known as almygdala because it has the shape and approximate size of an almond kernel (Dr. C, 2008). The above named human body parts are examples of the origins of anatomical names.

Muscles are named depending on their sizes, the direction of their fibers run, their bodily location, the bones they attach to, how they look like, where they are in relation to certain bones and their functions within the body. In most cases, muscle names contain combinations of each of the above. Without the consideration of these things, naming of muscles would be a daunting task because there are over six hundred muscles in the human body and identifying each of them is not an easy task. Early anatomists looked at the above mentioned things while naming the muscles for instance, muscles with names like 'longus' or 'brevis' was a result of how long or short they were. On the other hand, a muscle named based on the direction of its fibers run was because it appears to have lines running within it (Saunders, 1996).