ANATOPOD - The Anatomy Podcast

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...

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 crowdf...

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 Rep...

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 t...

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)]  

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 te...

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 almsho...

Second Head and Neck Quiz Musical Interlude  Frederic Chopin Ballad No 1 in G minor Opus 23   Answers in Detail

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 2nd H&N Quiz and then the answers in detail.   After a small hiatus I will move on to the anatomy of the upp...

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....

This podcast discusses the basic layered structural anatomy of the pharynx revisiting its attachment to the skull base and including the anatomical description of the 3 constrictor muscles (superior, middle and inferior - thyro- and cricopharyngeus) and the internal pharyngeal muscles (the salpingopharyngeus, the stylopharyngeus and the palatopharyngeus). The vascular, neural and lymphatic anatomy...

This is a continuation from Part 1 which placed the Hunters in their aristocratic milieu. In this podcast I discuss the different nature of the Hunterian collections as reflected by the differing personalities of William and John Hunter. The latter part of the podcast discusses the two other dissecting brothers John Bell and his younger brother Sir Charles.

This podcast discusses the boundaries of the mouth and the musculature of the soft palate (tensor palati, levator palati, musculus uvulae, palatoglossus and palatopharyngeus). Includes tonsillar anatomy. The anatomy of dentition is discussed. Includes the anatomy of the tongue (papillae, extrinsic and intrinsic musculature, blood supply, lymphatics and innervation) Basic assessment of facial embry...

In this podcast I introduce the Hunter brothers in their social and aristocratic milieu. The beginnings of the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy and the availability of the Parisian method of dissection is mentioned as is William’s great book The Human Gravid Uterus published in 1774 with spectacular images by Jan van Rymsdyk.  John Hunter’s obsession with obtaining the body of the giant Cha...

In the same way that one may think of the 16th Century as the century of dissection, so too could the 18th Century be considered the age of the museum. The anatomists along with the apothecaries and the aristocracy were establishing their mobile collections that would devolve from the Schätzkammern (the Chambers of Power) into individual anatomical collections of curiosities. These Wunderkammern (...

Consideration of the osteology of the nose (a recap of a prior podcast) with discussion of the conchae, the nasal septum and the quadrantic approach towards the blood and nerve supply of the lateral nose and the septum (Kiesselbach’s plexus/Little’s area), The blood and nerve supply and the lymphatic drainage of the paranasal sinuses are discussed.

In this podcast I assess the bony orbit and its components as well as the eyelids and the nasolacrimal apparatus. Next, aspects of eye stability and then the structure of the eye and the retina. The anatomy of the extraocular muscles and their specific movements are considered as is the explanation of individual ocular palsies based on that anatomical information. There is a summary of the nerves...

In this podcast the embalming skills of Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) are showcased. In an age where dissection was still an ephemeral event those like Ruysch and his contemporary rivals Jan von Swammerdam (1637-1680) and Louis de Bils (1624-1670) were highly prized. Ruysch went on to lead the Amsterdamer anatomy school and botany department for the next 65 years and was so renowned that when Sir Is...

There is discussion of the superficial and deep cerebral venous systems, one draining the cerebral hemispheres and the other more constant draining the basal ganglia and thalamus. The formation and tributaries of the internal jugular vein is discussed. Then the basic anatomy of the dural venous sinuses including details of the superior and inferior sagittal, transverse, straight, tentorial, sigmoi...

This podcast takes off after the first part (discussing the economic and political conditions of the Dutch provinces in the 17th Century) and considers the Anatomy Lesson paintings that are curated in Amsterdam. Two evocative portraits The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deijman executed by Rembrandt are examined on the background of his bankruptcy and the dea...

This is the same as the last podcast but has intro and outro music in the remix! One of my favourite short pieces composed by Joseph Horovitz for the BBC series Rumpole of the Bailey (written by Sir John Mortimer).

AHN 8. Consideration of the carotid sheath (revised) and the external carotid artery (ECA) and its individual branches, the internal carotid artery (ICA) in the neck, the component parts of the vertebral artery, the basilar artery and the Circle of Willis  (anatomical and functional aspects). The significance of archetypal ECA anastomoses (maxillofacial and faciopharyngeal) are mentioned. The next...

In this first of two podcasts I set the political and economic scene of the Netherlands as it emerged from the 80 Years War with Spain. In the period between 1600 and 1700 over one million paintings were commissioned and some of these included the so-called Anatomy Lesson Paintings of Northern Holland showing the Praelector Anatomiae (today’s equivalent of a City Chief Medical Officer or a Crown C...

ANSWERS, DISCUSSION AND EXPLANATION TO THE HEAD AND NECK QUIZ (No.1).

This podcast explains the debate in the dissecting halls during the Renaissance and beyond between Galenists and Cartesians. William Harvey (1578-1657) had developed his new experimentation as the methodology of science. Afterwards anatomy (like physics, astronomy and chemistry) needed to leave the natural philosophies and fall under the rubric of the developing sciences. Anatomy then became conce...