If you were asked to give a friend directions from your office to a
restaurant down the street, your instructions may sound something like this—turn
right at the office door, walk to the exit at the end of the hall, walk to
the bottom of the stairs, take a left, exit out of the front of the
building, walk across the bridge, continue straight for two blocks passing
the post office and library, and you will see the restaurant on your right.
If you pass the gas station, you have gone too far. The task is to get to
the restaurant. The landmarks guide your friend along the way to complete
the task.
Now, imagine if an anatomist were to
give directions from the office to the restaurant in the same way most
anatomy textbooks are written. Details would be relayed on the dimensions of
the office, paint color, carpet thread count, position and dimensions of the
desk in relation to the book shelf along the wall, including the number,
types, and sizes of books lining the shelves, and door dimensions and office
door material in relation to the other doors in the same building. This
would occur over the course of 10 pages—and the friend still would not
have left the office. The difference between you giving a friend directions
to a restaurant and the anatomist giving directions to the same restaurant
can be compared with the difference between many anatomy textbooks and this
Big Picture textbook—either getting to the restaurant with succinct
relevant directions or taking a long time to get to the restaurant or
possibly not finding it.
The purpose of this
textbook is to provide students with the necessary landmarks to accomplish
their task—to understand the big picture of human anatomy in the
context of health care, bypassing the minutia. The landmarks used to
accomplish this task are text and illustrations. They are complete, yet
concise and both figuratively and literally provide the "Big Picture" of
human anatomy.
The format of the book is simple.
Each page-spread consists of text on the left-hand page and associated
illustrations on the right-hand page. In this way, students are able to
grasp the big picture of individual anatomy principles in bite-sized pieces,
a concept at a time.
• Key structures are
highlighted in bold when first mentioned.
• Bullets and numbers
are used to break down important concepts.
• Approximately 450
full-color figures illustrate the essential anatomy.
• High-yield
clinically relevant concepts throughout the text are indicated by an icon.
• Study questions and answers follow each section.
• A final
examination is provided at the end of the text.
We hope you enjoy this text as much as we enjoyed writing it.
—David A.Morton
—K. Bo Foreman
—Kurt H. Albertine