Human Anatomy: An Illustrated Guide to the Structure and Function of the Body
Jane De Burgh (Editor)

I love illustrated anatomy and physiology books, so much so, that I have a collection of over a hundred, including my pride of joy: the complete Ciba-Geigy collection of Dr. Frank Netter. I can’t really explain why I’m so enamored of medical illustrations but, as a medical history nerd, I still find the human body, its functions and structure to be totally fascinating and medical illustrations enhance my admiration.

When the book Human Anatomy: An Illustrated Guide to the Structure and Function of the Body became available as a book to review on NetGalley, I quickly sent off a request and was quickly given a PDF copy to review. I am, by no means, an expert, but as someone who owns a number of books on the subject, I knew I could give a fair review.

The book is laid out very well, where each body system was examined separately. Each section has a nice introduction to the body system being discussed. There are separate pages for each organ or organelle with a brief description of the illustrations. I really liked the grey box on the upper left-hand corner that gave a summary explanation of what was going to be discussed on the page.

The text, for the most part, was well-written, though I have a few quibbles about some of the information presented. For instance, the mammillary body of the brain may be concerned with the sense of smell but I found no evidence of this when I researched the organ; it’s mainly concerned with memory and spatial navigation. There were a few other minor textual issues that I encountered, but I strike this up to reading a work in progress and I have high hopes that any misinformation will be corrected before publication.

One notion that the book presented with which I was not familiar was the idea of the mitochondria as a battery. But the more I read about the idea—there are plenty of Internet pages on the subject—the more I realize that the analogy has some merit. Both a battery and mitochondria convert a substance into energy, but I feel the comparison breaks down because the mitochondria doesn’t really store energy as a battery does, instead makes the energy then distributed to other parts of the body. I admit it’s an interesting concept.

As for the illustrations, while I felt that most of the illustrations were what I would expect from a book on anatomy, I really liked some of the angles that the illustrators used, giving the reader a much different perspective than the usual.

There’s a lot to like about this book and I would recommend Human Anatomy: An Illustrated Guide to the Structure and Function of the Body for someone interested in a visual approach to learning about it.

4/5 stars

[Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the advanced ebook copy in exchange for my honest and objective opinion, which I have given here.]