Anatomy is a branch of biological science which is concerned with the description of body structures of various living organisms as revealed by dissection.
The word anatomy is derived from the Greek word “anatomē”, where “ana” means “up” and “tome” means “cutting.” Originally, anatomy was first learnt by cutting up corpses, hence the name “anatomy.
As mentioned above, Anatomy was primarily learnt through dissection. The word ‘Anatomy’ and ‘dissection’ have virtually the same meaning in Greek and Latin. Besides the fact that both the words have the same source, anatomy has a broad discipline of its own and the word “dissection” is completely removed.
On the other hand, Physiology mainly deals with the functions and processes of the human body. It is distinctly different from anatomy as the latter deals specifically with the structure of the organism.
Anatomy is classified into:
- Microscopic Anatomy (Histology)
- Gross Anatomy (Macroscopic anatomy).
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