Teaching Anatomy in the Digital World

Anatomy has a long and checkered past as a scientific discipline. In ancient Egypt, dissection was a religious ritual. During the Renaissance, it was considered an artistic and spiritual exploration of life, suffering, and death. Its heyday came in the 19th century, with the development of quick, effective surgical techniques on the battlefield and, later, the introduction of anesthesia, when knowledge of the structural intricacies of the body began to have practical significance for doctors. Throughout the 20th century, dissection of the human body served as an initiation rite for first-year medical students, even as the research focus in the . . .