ANATOPOD - The Anatomy Podcast

HEAD & NECK QUIZ Number 4

This is the 4th and final Head and Neck Quiz

 

Please if you can contribute as a Patron on:

https://patron.podbean.com/ANATOPOD

 

We appreciate your support to improve the quality of these podcasts (with sound recording in a professional studio and for equipment) and in creation of specific vodcasts and interview casts.

 

Thanks so much.

This year I will complete the History of Anatomy section and then it is on to the Upper Limb!

 

Enjoy your anatomy!

 

Andrew

The Anatomy Cupboard - Tales from the Top Shelf

Introducing a new segment of ANATOPOD –

 

These vignettes from the history of anatomy are unique stories that will appear initially once a month and later in 2022 fortnightly.

 

I hope you enjoy them

 

If you are able please become a Patron member of ANATOPOD.. you can pledge as much as you like at:

 

https://patron.podbean.com/ANATOPOD

 

It is all greatly appreciated and will assist in our crowdfunding for better equipment and professional studio time as well as to convert ANATOPOD into an audiovisual teaching channel

 

As a Patron please let me known on our facebook site what subjects you wish covered (in anatomy or its history) and I will do it

 

Please enjoy your anatomy!

 

Best Wishes

 

Andrew

 

Music

Departure  - Alice in Winter

Licensed for use by Soundstripe

ANATOPOD _ THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY

Well, on the first anniversary of launching ANATOPOD, it seems sensible to re-examine our goals.

 

I am heartened by the fact that there have been so many downloads across the world and not only that ANATOPOD is listened to in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and India but also in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Moldova, Estonia, Poland, Uruguay, the Czech Republic, Iran, Jamaica, Sudan, Taiwan and Morocco. We have learned too what is important and for many of you it has been the osteology of the skull and its foraminae but also the fasciae and triangles of the neck, the prevertebral musculature and structure of the cervical plexus, the autonomic nervous system of the head and neck and the central relay stations of the brainstem and cranial nerves.

 

There is another Head and Neck Quiz (Number 4) coming up and then we shall move on to the anatomy of the upper limb in detail.

 

But I wish in this re-examination to invite our listeners and followers after a year to support us if you can through Podbean patreon contributing as much as you wish on a monthly basis so that I can get some better equipment and move ANATOPOD into a professional studio.

 

You can SUPPORT ANATOPOD at https://patron.podbean.com/ANATOPOD

 

Simple really. Once there pledge as much as you wish. I am most grateful for your contribution (and if you don’t wish to contribute that is perfectly fine too as ANATOPOD will still continue posting, there are NO premium sections in this podcast!).

 

So for the price of a cup of coffee (1-5$ a month) you are an ANATOPOD Affiliate and I will give you a shout out on the next podcast and on our monthly honour roll.

 

For $10 a month you become an ANATOPOD Guardian Angel and you can let me know what special topic you wish done as a podcast and I will do it. Anatomy, History of Anatomy, whatever you wish!

 

For 15$ (or more) a month you are an ANATOPOD Templar and I will send you an e-copy of my book The Figurative Life of the Cadaver on the history of dissection and also a copy of my upcoming book as a draft on the social impact of infectious disease.

 

Soon to be launched on this site too are the anecdotal stories of anatomy in The Anatomy Cupboard – Tales for the Top Shelf. These vignettes will appear once a month and I am sure you will enjoy them.

 

Thanks again for your support and for listening!

 

 

Best Andrew

 

(Just let me know your views on our FB site ANATOPOD)

 

 

Anatomical Transparency: Röentgen’s Rays and the New Ways of Seeing

This podcast traces the beginnings of X-rays as the new objective medium to demonstrate the interior of the body, its latest transparency that has given way to the ultrasound, the CAT scan, the MRI and the PET scan. With each there had been a rapid public acceptance but also a social expectation of use that has seen the more complex machinery devolve into more peripheral environments somewhat at the expense of the trusted clinical examination of the patient first defined in its exactness by Boerhaave and Bichat and by Laennec’ s invention of the stethoscope.

 

Photography in replacing the anatomical artist relied on its unmodified precision but the newer radiological imagery depends for accuracy on post-processing of the image (its own photoshop if you will). Society is inundated with the radiological imagery of humans just as much as the leading protagonist of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, young Hans Castorp carried around the picture of his love Claudia Chauchat. In the Davos Tuberculosis sanitorium where he spent 4 years carried close to his heart was not her photograph but rather a copy of her Chest X-ray.

 

Featured Martha Argerich playing the Capriccio Partita in C Minor by J.S. Bach

HEAD & NECK QUIZ 3

This is the 3rd Head and Neck Quiz

The first part of the podcast includes the questions followed by a little thinking music (Schumann's Traumerei, Kinderschenen No. 7 Scenes from Childhood) after which are the answers and their explanation.

Good Luck!

[The main theme music is Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor (Op 16)]

 

Picturing Mr. Gray‘s Dissection Method: The Invention of an Iconography

By 1858 Henry Gray (1826-1861) and his illustrator Henry Vandyke Carter (1831-1897) got together and designed Gray’s Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical. The illustrations eschewed the use of Baroque and complex imagery and made the pictures schematic and precise with in situ labelling of structures without complicated arrows and proxy labels. Very soon the book became the most famous and popular text on anatomy on both sides of the Atlantic and it has been in print ever since. Gray’s became iconic not only over its textual style but over the Carter imagery which in the latest incarnations has now been abandoned. The new Gray’s under Susan Standring is a mix of gross anatomy, microscopic histology, pathology, molecular biology, 3D CGI imagery and CR-ROMS. As a result, Gray’s IS Anatomy.

 

But so little is known about Gray himself as he died from smallpox at the age of 34.

 

This podcast considers the formation of Gray’s book and the immediate aftermath following his death.

Part 2 - Getting Hold of Bodies: The Genesis of the Anatomy Act and the Traffic of Corpses to the Medical Schools

I continue with the trans-Atlantic story of the traffic of dissectable corpses, beginning with the notorious Burke and Hare scandal in England. This was soon followed by the Bishop and Williams scare which galvanized the Utilitarian Anatomy Act of 1832 proposed by Henry Warburton MP. But the Act transferred the burden of dissection onto those who died in the infirmaries, the workhouses, the almshouses and the asylums without body claim. All it did was to transfer that onus onto the indigent effectively criminalizing poverty.

Nevertheless the trade of the resurrection men (and their American equivalent, the sack-‘em-up men) disappeared and were replaced by State-sanctioned Anatomy Inspectorates.

In amongst this I discuss the tragic case of the Lewes farmer Stephen Pollard who was killed in a negligent operation for cutting the stone.

The idea that an exposure by the surgeons to more bodies might somehow result in an improvement in patient care in the infirmaries was more aspirational than real. Significant improvements would have to await the advantages of anaesthesia and antisepsis and the Anatomy Act for the moment had little impact on the terrible in-hospital mortality and carnage.    

Head and Neck Quiz No. 2

Second Head and Neck Quiz

Musical Interlude  Frederic Chopin Ballad No 1 in G minor Opus 23

 

Answers in Detail

The Anatomy of the Larynx

This podcast defines the structure of the laryngeal skeleton comprising its cartilages, joints, ligaments and membranes along with the anatomy of the cavity of the larynx and the laryngeal musculature (intrinsic and extrinsic).

 

Next week we will complete the Head and Neck Anatomy with the 2^nd H&N Quiz and then the answers in detail.

 

After a small hiatus I will move on to the anatomy of the upper limb.

Getting Hold of Bodies: The Genesis of the Anatomy Act of 1832 and the Traffic of Corpses to the Medical Schools

This podcast describes the 1752 Murder Act in England and its equivalent in America along with the tough equation of body access for the dissectors: the problem of supply and demand.

With its hanging tree at Tyburn London became what the historian Alexander Andrews called “a city of gallows” just as much as Paris was marked a generation on through its Guillotine as a place of mechanistic cruelty.

The terrible state of the London infirmary is discussed and I introduce the founder of The Lancet magazine (and purported champion of the people) Thomas Wakley (1795-1862). The response to dissection by the families of those condemned for execution was a series of rag tag riots loosely called the Tyburn riots but they had their equivalent across the Atlantic, the Doctor’s Riot of New York (1788) which began just 4 months after the American Revolutionary War.

Meanwhile in England, a Parliamentary Select Committee was established in 1828 for the purpose of creating a new Utilitarian Anatomy Act but all this would do would be to transfer the burden of dissection from the murderers to those dying in the workhouses and the almshouses. In effect the new legislation, even if enacted with the best of intentions, had effectively criminalized poverty.