The plates in this article are a small but representative selection from Human Structure and Shape, by John Hull Grundy, first published in 1982 in hardback by Noble Books in Chilbolton, Hampshire, United Kingdom. You may be able to find the entire book through rare-book finders or via the Internet, but few copies exist, the author is deceased, and the book itself is out of print.

The commentary that accompanies each plate is my own, designed to interpret the pictures in a way relevant to today's massage therapist. The commentary is definitely weighted toward my own structural style of working, but Grundy's engaging artistic style and his wit will make this article fun and useful for the profession as a whole. 

You don't have to be interested in all the details of anatomy to feel Grundy's love for form and function. Anyone can draw inspiration from his refreshing take on body mechanics, and from the breath of life in movement that imbues every one of his drawings.

A Talented, Eccentric Physician 

John Hull Grundy studied art at King's College and the Chelsea School of Art in London before joining the staff of the Royal College of Art. The advent of World War II drew him into the world of medicine, and he developed his drawing of the body with anatomical studies made for the Royal College of Surgeons and the Orpington War Hospital. In 1942, he began as lecturer in Entomology at the Royal Army Medical College in London, a post he kept until his retirement in 1967. On his retirement, he was named a member of the British Empire (MBE).
His artwork on bugs is much more widely known than his work on human anatomy. He was a gifted teacher and lecturer, and a perfectionist in his draftsmanship; he was known to tear up an almost perfect and completed picture because of a small inaccuracy. It would break the hearts of some of his students to watch him erase the most exacting and superbly executed drawings from the blackboard as if they were mere doodles.

Grundy was also an imaginative thinker, and applied his ingenuity and mental flexibility to interesting problems, mostly to do with getting bedbugs, beetles, mosquitoes and lice to leave some intractable place they were infesting.

Human Structure and Shape was compiled in the early 1980s by Dr. Smith from drawings that spanned Grundy's entire career, beginning in the 1920s. Therefore, the pictures display an incredible variety of style and method. They also display a remarkable set of insights into human movement unequaled in both visual accessibility and simple common sense.
To give some flavor of his thinking-since he offered no commentary or text to accompany the pictures, and the rest of what you read will be my addition-here are a few quotes from his brief introduction to the book: "The word Anatomy has a Greek derivation, ana- up, and temno-to cut, and means the study of the animal machine by taking it to pieces in order to understand and reconstruct it in the memory."

I love this part about reconstructing it in the memory. In the massage profession, the study of anatomy suffers precisely because so much of its presentation is not memorable. Part of this situation is that, in order to feel "professional," massage schools have sought out medical practitioners-doctors, chiropractors, etc.-in an attempt to enhance the credibility of their programs. While the motivation concerning lifting the profession is laudable, the end result is often that massage students are being taught aspects of anatomy more relevant to medical pathology than to the daily practice of hands-on soft-tissue work, so the anatomy is forgotten as irrelevant. 

For the massage therapist, the reason for studying anatomy is very simple: When you can "reconstruct in your memory" the structures under your hands, your intuitions, perceptions and assessments about those structures will be more clear and more reliable. The study of anatomy is not anathema to intuition; to the contrary, it is one of its strongest pillars of support. But it has to be taught memorably.

Therefore, this article, Grundy's engaging and unique views on human anatomy are among the most memorable and relevant I have ever seen.

"Anatomy is the study of mechanical machine, while Physiology (physis- nature and logos-discourse) deals with the functions of the parts. Anatomy shows how a body works, Physiology shows why a body works, and Art (aro-to fit) consummates the sciences into a worthy study for the human mind, by causing the student to strive for perfection in a practical manner,"Grundy writes.

In more recent years, our profession, has started to develop an anatomy more suited to our own work and our own point of view-an anatomy of spatial medicine designed for holistic practitioners, and the beginnings of a physiology that includes that vast, untraveled area-positive physiology. We know, perhaps, what "average" physiology should be, and we certainly know a lot about pathophysiology, but we know almost nothing about where we could be in terms of body function-what Grundy, with his love of Greek, might call "hygieophysiology," a physiology of health. What are the physiological possibilities offered by yoga, martial arts practice, meditation, and proper responses to stress, emotional maturity, and full self-expression? Can we achieve planetary awareness, or even substantial local sensitivity, to, or awareness of, the beings around us? And can Art-the great "fitter" as Grundy suggests-help us to put these concepts into a workable whole? Grundy-an eccentric Londoner-certainly made an attempt.

"Doctors and medical men want to know about function more than they do about shape. The Artist, on the other hand, is chiefly interested in the shape itself. Nature is such a good Architect that she shapes her work so that it efficiently performs its duties," he writes.
Grundy goes on to excoriate both medical and artistic anatomies for not successfully combining the two ends of the spectrum, and urges the student to follow the example of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci by personally exploring without being frightened or bored by the complexity of the body. The student should push through, drawn by his reason, to "fill in the empty spaces in the ranks of culture, as well as using his brain on the most wonderful thing ever constructed."

Though Grundy's respect for the body was boundless, he knew well, from his study of insect infestations, the problems associated with humans on the earth. He quotes Nietzche: "The Earth has a skin, and that skin hath diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called man."

He also takes a surprisingly global view: "I understand the Earth to be a mass of white hot chrome nickel steel. The surface of that liquid mass having long since cooled into dross. That dross has corroded into hills and valleys of earths and minerals, waters, and gases. These split up parts have recombined into plants, insects, mammals, and human bodies, all conforming to physical laws like that of gravity."

His view of body mechanics is likewise global: "From the physical aspect, Man is basically a long alimentary tract beginning at the mouth and ending at the anus. To give man his mobility (this alimentary canal) has been hoisted on a bone rod and ring structure about one meter from the ground; with a further extension of bone rings extending approximately 70 cm, to balance the mouth end of the tract. This enables the sense organs ... to be in the best position to function beneficially."

Besides the dry humor and originality of thought, or perhaps at the foundation of both of these, is Grundy's fundamental quality of reverence: "(Let us not) resemble the person who borrowed a drilling brace from a mechanic and took it to pieces. With a few files, he then laboriously imitated each piece in soft iron, complete even to the engraved name of the maker. Then after assembling his imitation he returned the original with many thanks, but was astonished when he found that his tool, which could not be told from the original article by appearance, would not drill properly, since cogs, ratchets and drills were almost immediately useless, and all on account of the imitator concentrating his brain power on the anatomy or cut up parts of the tool, and neglecting altogether the physiology or nature and function of those parts.
By analogy, a knowledge of muscles and bones is not enough for the anatomical draughtsman; he must also have a reverence for the parts, engendered by a deeper understanding and sympathy with the nature of the Human Machine, which constitutes the most perfect and free-living structure in existence."

With Grundy's caveat as well as his reverence ringing in our ears, we can now proceed to a selection of Grundy's anatomical renderings of this most graceful, soft machine.

llustration 1 
Here, Grundy uses a stippling, almost pointiliste method to show the muscular body as a whole in action. When held up against the kind of "Mr. Muscle" chart that adorns most of our massage schools and many of our practices, this overall view clearly emphasizes the connections among muscles in action, rather than the mechanical or static action of individual muscles. And it's a lovely, gentle piece of art with which to begin our journey.

Illustration 2 
 Why is it that we so rarely see views like this-individual or groups of muscles abstracted so that we can see their action on the skeleton? Here we see two views of those muscles-the erectors and the gluteals-that lift us out of the four-legged view of the world. These muscles lift up our eyes unto the hills, and free our hands to do their work. These, of course, are the muscles that tend to ache when we lean forward over a table, or collapse forward in regression toward the quadrupedal or infantile primary flexion posture. 

Grundy's view accentuates the connected nature of these two muscle groups, extending the hips and extending the spine to lift us into our unique plantigrade posture. When they are separated from the rest of the musculature in this way, with the skeleton as in vivo, their function is made so clear, and our job made clearer, as we try to take some of the long-standing tension out of these endurance muscles.

Illustration 3 
The first of Grundy's explanatory drawings of the mechanics of a particular area, this plate shows how the cervical, thoracic and lumbar portions of the erector spinae, shown in the previous plate, act like ropes. They allow the spine to go forward when they are relaxed (upper drawing), or bring the back and head up when contracting. Notice how the tightening of these "ropes" creates the secondary curves of the spine in the lumbars and cervicals. Notice also the placement of the "pulleys," the places where the pull actually comes from. These are the transitional areas between the spinal sections and spinal curves-the cervico-thoracic junction, the thoracico-lumbar junction and the sacro-lumbar junction. This picture provides the clearest rendition of the action of the longissimus and semispinalis muscles that this anatomy teacher has seen.

Illustration 4 
A waist is a terrible thing to mind! Here Grundy shows us an essential piece of anatomy so often ignored in our standard anatomy books: The abdominals reach all the way around to the back. Here we can see the fascial plane of the transversus abdominis, the body's "belt," spanning around from the front to pass in front of the erectors (as seen in the previous view) and the quadratus (as seen in the next view) to attach to the transverse processes of the lumbar vertebrae. The fascial planes of the external and internal oblique join into this pattern as well.

In so many people, their internal image of the abdominals fades as it reaches the sides of the body, and in very few does their awareness of these muscles extend around to their back. And yet, the support from these abdominals, the transversus in particular, is essential to supporting the lumbars in effortful situations. Imagine moving a piano; can you feel how you tighten those abdominals? One result of this tightening is a considerable stabilization on the lumbars, keeping them from both getting too close to each other as well as keeping them from bowing forward.

We can also see in this picture how many different directions the fibers take in these deep layers. The sensitive explorer in these deeper layers will find all kinds of varying directions within the fascial planes of the deep layers in the back. Remember, of course, that these layers in the "back" come from the front!

Illustration 5 
Another set of views we rarely see, this time of the quadratus lumborum (left) and the transversus abdominis (right-includes the diaphragm as well). Taking the figure on the right first, we see the transversus, whose posterior fibers we just saw in the previous plate. In this view, we see clearly its relationship to the diaphragm, and how these two muscles together form a significant portion of the "abdominal balloon"-those muscles that surround and contain the abdomino-pelvic organs. The fascial plane of the abdominals that would complete the abdominal balloon across the front and include the rectus abdominis are left out here. Functionally, the two tranversi, left and right, would meet fascially in the middle under the vertical rectus, but in characteristically iconoclastic Grundy fashion, it is left out so that you can actually see into the body, where we see the pelvic bowl, and above it, the quadratus lumborum (QL).

In the left-hand picture, the QL has been abstracted alone, with only a bit of its accompanying fascia. The role of the QL in stabilizing the lower ribs on the pelvis is clear, but that is nothing new. What is new is the clarity with which these views allow us to see that the QL is anterior to the abdominals, or, more properly, the abdominal fascia as it reaches around back.
So many times, when I ask a new student, "Show me how you reach the quadratus lumborum," they will put their fingers on the back just lateral to the spinous processes between the 12th rib and the iliac crest, and poke in toward the front. What should now be clear from the preceding images is that there are two large and thick myofascial layers-the erectors and the abdominals-between the practitioner's fingers and the QL in this approach. I have no doubt that the practitioner is finding and affecting something back in there, but I strongly doubt that it is the QL. The QL itself can only really be approached from the side, through the little "window" that we can see when we look into the belly of the figure on the right. By lying your client on his or her side, and walking your fingers up and back along the inside of the pelvic rim (iliac crest), you will encounter the leading outside edge of the quadratus fascia (which, if followed, carries you up to the 12th rib, a dead giveaway that you are in the right place). Because of the fascial window (Petit's triangle) that Grundy shows on the right side, it is possible to swim your fingers in your client to the front side of the quadratus, or at least its leading edge-a far more effective way of lengthening this tissue, and affecting it in terms of its reflexes to the kidneys and breathing functions.

lllustration 6 
The pelvis, in my experience of teaching, is one of the hardest (and most essential, for the massage therapist) areas to visualize in three dimensions. In the second of Grundy's mechanical "explanations," here we see him creating a pelvis from wood or cardboard in a brave attempt to configure the palpable reality of the pelvis on a flat page. From the standard image of the pelvis as a crosspiece supporting the single pole of the spine on the two pillars of the legs (1), he then shows the primary displacements between the upper and lower poles, showing how the pelvis both curves around (2) and leans back (2a), and then combining these two (3). From here he refines the heart-shaped hole that forms the pelvic floor and the specialities of the pubic bone and other attachment sites (4-7). Take a piece of children's modeling clay, and you can easily follow Grundy's mechanical logic, and learn with your hands the underlying simplicity behind the complexity of the pelvic shape.

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