Whether your aim is to become a physical therapist or a pharmacist, a doctor or an acupuncturist, a nutritionist or a personal trainer, a registered nurse or a paramedic, a parent or simply a healthy human being your efforts have to be based on a good understanding of anatomy and physiology. But knowing that the knee bone connects to the thigh bone (or does it?) is just the tip of the iceberg.
In Anatomy & Physiology Workbook for Dummies, you discover intricacies that will leave you agog with wonder.
The human body is a miraculous biological machine capable of growing, interacting with the world, and even reproducing despite any number of environmental odds stacked against it. Understanding how the body’s interlaced systems accomplish these feats requires a close look at everything from chemistry to structural mechanics.
Early anatomists relied on dissections to study the human body, which is why the Greek word anatomia means “to cut up or dissect.”
Anatomical references have been found in Egypt dating back to 1600 BC, but it was the Greeks Hippocrates, in particular who first dissected bodies for medical study around 420 BC. That’s why more than two millennia later we still use words based on Greek and Latin roots to identify anatomical structures. That’s also part of the reason so much of the study of anatomy and physiology feels like learning a foreign language.
Truth be told, you are working with a foreign language, but it’s
the language of you and the one body you’re ever going to have.
