This article describes some useful anatomy sites on the world wide web (WWW). These sites are not designed to replace the use of standard, reliable and well-loved textbooks. However, they offer a rich variety of perspective and alternative approaches to anatomy.

Graphic from the Information Graphics Corporation, www.innerbody.com. Used with permission.

Please note that if you have difficulty accessing a page, you may have to start at the organization's main home page and work from there. For example, http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu will take you to the science and mathematics resources home page that Martindale's anatomy and histology guide can be accessed from.

Starting Points

http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/MedicalAnatomy.html#ANEXAMS This is the home page of Martindale's Virtual Medical Center Anatomy and Histology Guide. At 199 KB, the initial loading of this page may take some time, but if you want a comprehensive starting point for anatomical information on the internet, this is the place. It has hundreds of links to the best anatomical sites on the internet.

This URL is for the World Lecture Hall's anatomy page. Instructors from all over the world post links to these anatomy pages. If you work backward from this link (i.e., to: http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/world/lecture/) you can access the main page of the World Lecture Hall and search for online information about courses in almost any subject area.

Anatomy Introduction/Overview/Basics

http://www.northland.cc.mn.us/biololgy.htm This is the home page for the biology department at Northland Community and Technical College in Minnesota. This home page has course descriptions as well as links to PowerPoint® slide presentations of complete introductory-level anatomy, physiology, and microbiology courses.

This is the URL for Terry Wiseth's series of PowerPoint slide presentations of an introductory level anatomy classes at Northland Community and Technical College. Slides include lectures on skin, bone, joints, and muscles. http://www.anatomy.uq.edu.au/gmc/yr1/web_tutorials.html

These are The University of Queensland's web-based anatomy tutorials. There are more than forty of these tutorials, including an examination trial, mnemonics of the body, neuroanatomy, skeleton, skull, gastrointestinal system, anatomical basis of the PAP smear, neck, blood, skin, and lymphatic systems.

Some tutorials are simple text-only documents, without graphics. Others are quite detailed, with good use of graphics. An example of the latter type of tutorial is the venous system tutorial at:

The anatomy of the neck tutorial has color line art of neck anatomy, including fascial anatomy of the neck, but has no text outside of the labels on the diagrams. While most tutorials are html documents, the foramina of the skull tutorial is a pdf document and has to be downloaded with Adobe Acrobat?. You can download the Acrobat reader file at no cost from the Acrobat site: http://www.Springer.de/help/acrobat3.html

Anatomical Movements

This web page from the University of Michigan's Learning Resource Center features video clips of movements in the anatomical planes: flexion/extension, abduction/adduction, external/internal rotation, including movements of the scapulae, hand, and ankle and foot.

Nomenclature

This covers basic anatomy vocabulary, such as planes of the body, common prefixes, and suffixes.

Anatomy Tables

The University of Arkansas's medical sciences anatomy tables are very comprehensive. The anatomical information is organized by system (i.e., arteries, bones, joint, lymphatics, muscles, nerves, veins, viscera), or by region (i.e., back, thorax, abdomen, upper and lower limb, head and neck). There is even a set of tables of topographic landmarks.