INTRODUCTION TO

ANATOMY
MWANGI K J (MSc Anat,Bsc Clin Med)
 Early Greeks
Greeks explained illness in terms of the 4 body humors (fluids).
• Thought the humors were governed by air, water, fire, and earth
• Healthy person had all four humors in balance.
Many “doctors” practiced by trial and error. If they made a lot of
errors, people quit going to them.
Socles, a physician, treated a hunchback by piling three solid stones,
each four feet square, on his spine. He was crushed and died, but he
became straighter
 Hippocrates (460 to 379 BC)
• Early Greek physician
• Believed that illness had a
physical cause
• Rejected superstitions
• Based medical treatments
on observations
 Role of Religion

• Many religions influenced the study of the body.

• Against church doctrine to dissect a human.
 Claudius Galen (120 to 200)

• Roman physician,
“team doctor” for the
gladiators.
• Kept them alive so they
could fight again.
• Did not dissect humans, but did
extensive work on pigs and monkeys.
• His mistake was to assume that humans
and animals were identical internally.
• His writings were taken as “law” for
hundred of years.
Early anatomical
drawing based
on
misinformation.
 Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 to 1519)

• Artists in Renaissance period interested in human form, so

studied anatomy.
• Da Vinci made hundreds of anatomically correct drawings.
He dissected bodies in secret.
• He dissected human cadavers, sawed and analyzed bones,
and prepared models, which drew from various perspectives
to produce 3- D images of the organs.
Andreas Vesalius (1514 to 1564)

Barber surgeon (combination barber, dentist, doctor).

Got special permission from the Pope to dissect
criminals.
First scientist to understand human anatomy.
Wrote the first accurate book on human anatomy –
Fabrica.
 Shortage of cadavers

• In England and Scotland, medical schools began to open.

• No one donated bodies to science – churchgoers believed
in literal rising from grave, so dissection spoiled chances
of resurrection.
• Became a tradition to rely on executed prisoners, even up
to 18th and 19th centuries.
 Serious Crimes
• The added punishment of being dissected after
death was considered another deterrent from crime.
• Ex. – Steal a pig: you were hung
• Kill a person: you were hung and dissected
• Anatomists were often associated with executioners.
• Because they needed body parts, anatomists at
medical school bought odd things.
• A man could sell the leg of his son if it had to be
amputated
 William Harvey (English)
Circa 1590

• “Father of Anatomy”; studied circulatory

system
• Harvey dissected his own freshly dead family
members (his father and sister) before burial.
 Grave Robbing

• Some medical students raided grave yards;

some professors did also.
• In certain Scottish schools in 1700s, you
could trade a corpse for your tuition.
 Resurrectionists
• By 1828 in London, body snatchers (or
resurrectionists) provided the medical schools with
corpses.
• Not a crime; a dead body could not be owned or
stolen.
• (Anatomy studies were only conducted from October
to May to avoid stench of decomposition.)
• Wealthy people chose to be buried in iron cages,
some covered in concrete. Also churches built “dead
houses” which were locked and guarded.
 William Burke and William Hare
Circa 1828

• 2 resurrectionists
• Hare owned a boarding house; he occasionally killed a
border who was late on rent. (Killed 15 of them)
• Did it by pressing pillow to man’s face while Burke lay his
body weight on top of victim. Became known as “Burking.”
• Bones made into skeletons for medical school. Skin used to
make wallets.
• Anatomy Act of 1832 – bodies of poor
who were not claimed for burial could
be used by anatomists.
• Operated under this same concept
until recently.
• Donations are on the rise.