ANATOMY

a field in the biological sciences concerned with the identification and description of the body structures of living things. Gross anatomy involves the study of major body structures by dissection and observation and in its narrowest sense is concerned only with the human body. Gross anatomy customarily refers to the study of those body structures large enough to be examined without the help of magnifying devices, while microscopic anatomy is concerned with the study of structural units small enough to be seen only with a light microscope. Dissection is basic to all anatomical research. The earliest record of its use was made by the Greeks, and Theophrastus called dissection anatomy, from ana temnein, meaning to cut up. Comparative anatomy, the other major subdivision of the field, compares similar body structures in different species of animals in order to understand the adaptive changes they have undergone in the course of evolution. (See comparative anatomy.) in literature, the separating or dividing of a topic into parts for detailed examination or analysis. Among the better-known examples are John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit and Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The literary critic Northrop Frye, in his book Anatomy of Criticism, narrowed the definition of the word to mean a work resembling a Menippean satire, or one in which a mass of information is brought to bear on the subject being satirized, usually a particular attitude or type of behaviour. The word is from the Greek anatome, dissection.