What is Gray’s Anatomy

You may be more familiar with Grey’s Anatomy as made famous by the TV show, however, in this article Gray’s Anatomy refers to the most extensive Anatomical Atlas ever assembled. This work is widely used when educating students of healthcare professions all over the world. For physical therapists detailed knowledge of anatomy is fundamental to all other aspects of their profession. Without this detailed knowledge they are simply not able to do their work as well as required. Below you can read a short summary of the history of this fundamentally important work in medical history.

The History of Gray’s Anatomy

The British anatomist Henry Gray was born in 1827. He studied the development of the endocrine glands and spleen and in 1853 he was appointed Lecturer on Anatomy at St.George’s Hospital Medical School in London. In 1855 he approached his colleague Dr.Henry Vandyke Carter with his idea to produce an anatomy textbook for medical students. His death came just three years after the publication of his work Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical. The illustrations and anatomical cross sections are renowned for their rustic and often haunting presentation, but they no longer represent up-to-date anatomical knowledge. Henry Gray wrote the original version of Gray’s Anatomy with an audience of medical students and physicians in mind, especially surgeons.

For many decades however, precisely because Gray’s textbook became such a classic, successive editors made major efforts to preserve its position as possibly the most authoritative text on the subject in the English language. Toward this end, a long-term strategy appears to have been to have the book contain a fully comprehensive account of the anatomical and medical knowledge available at the time of publication of each edition. As of december 2007, the latest edition of Gray’s Anatomy is the 39th edition, published on November 25, 2004 in the UK and November 24, 2004 in the U.S. The latest edition is also available on CD-ROM.

This book is essential literature for any student or practioneer of the medical professions who requires a little bit more from their anatomy books and wants be the best at their profession. The average anatomical atlas is considered a comic book compared to this one.

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