Soumya Chakraborty

Adriaan van den Spiegel (1578–1625): Anatomist, physician, and botanist

Adriaan van den Spiegel (1578–1625) was a Flemish anatomist and physician. He was one of the most prominent anatomists at the University of Padua during the 17th century and became professor of anatomy and surgery there in 1619. He was privileged to have two of the most accomplished anatomists of that period, Fabricius ab Aquapendente and Iulius Casserius, as his teachers. His anatomical works were published after his death by his pupil Bucretius and his son‐in‐law Liberalis Crema, with illustrations procured from Casseriuss unpublished anatomical atlas. He contributed significantly to establishing basic morphological facts about the developing embryo in his text De formato foetu liber singularis. In his book De humani corporis fabrica libri decem, Spiegels lobe (caudate lobe) of the liver and the linea semilunaris (Spiegels line) on the lateral side of the rectus abdominis muscle were described for the first time. Subsequently, Spigelian aponeurosis (between the lateral margin of the rectus abdominis and the linea semilunaris) and Spigelian hernia (lateral ventral hernia) were named after him. He was a renowned physician in his time and was the first to give a detailed description of malaria. He made significant contributions as a botanist: the genus Spigelia, which has six species, is named after him. Clin. Anat. 27:952–957, 2014.

Learning anatomy from the internet

Learning methodologies in anatomy have been revolutionised in the 21st century and, in accordance with adult learning principles, 1 students are exploring newer media for learning the subject. The internet is an emerging platform for learning anatomy worldwide, and this has been complemented by the availability of highquality, as well as easy to retrieve, online resources. 2 The internet is a phenomenal data resource, providing the user with numerous learning tools, and we suggest that a little assistance could be useful for helping students use the net more effectively for learning anatomy. We hypothesised that the perceptions of fi rstyear undergraduate students could be the basis for identifying the popular anatomy learning tools from the internet and analysing their effectiveness in actually assisting students to learn the subject. In our opinion this would be of considerable help to future medical students in learning anatomy from the internet.

Enhancing learning in anatomy lectures

Medical education in India typically consists of a traditional lecture-based curriculum. Accordingly, the anatomy teaching schedule for 1-year undergraduate medical students consists of many hours of classroom-based lectures. During these lecture sessions, we observed that a significant number of the students were regularly absent from class, and among those present, most were not paying attention. In our assessment, these lecture hours were contributing little to the overall learning process in anatomy.

Assessment of empathy among first-year medical students: A knowledge, attitude and practice study

Good clinicians are expected to demonstrate empathetic behaviour whereby it is necessary for medical students to develop an empathetic attitude during the curriculum. The anatomy classroom is possibly the ideal place to cultivate the sense of empathy among medical students as they deal with the feelings associated with dissecting a human cadaver. Hence we conducted this knowledge, attitude and practice study to assess the empathetic attitude among first-year medical students. A self designed, pretested questionnaire was framed to explore the sense of empathy and the questionnaire was administered among 100 first year MBBS students before the summative assessment and their responses were collected and analyzed. We observed that 55% and 16.3% of the respondents were inclined for adopting a mechanized approach to patient care as they were in favour of investigation oriented diagnosis and medicine based treatment respectively as primary component of medical practice. Only 16.3% and 12.2% of the respondents prioritized patient oriented approaches in the form of understanding the disease process and emphasizing on communication with patients respectively. During clinical training 70.4% and 15.3% of respondents would concentrate on self development as they look forward to honing their clinical skills and acquiring high level of knowledge respectively. Only 8.2% and 6.1% of the respondents opted for developing patient oriented skills like developing an empathetic attitude and enhancing communication skills respectively. However 60.2% agreed that empathy of a physician does influence the clinical outcome and 74.5% opined that they have developed/enhanced a feeling of empathy by learning anatomy through human cadaver based teaching. Empathy among first-year medical students was on the lower side, however they have developed a baseline empathy level after one year of attending dissection classes in anatomy. Effectively designed education strategies can further enhance the feeling of empathy during clinical training.

Learning anatomy from the internet: authors’ response

3 . Dissabandara LO , Nirthanan SN , Khoo TK , Tedman R . Role of cadaveric dissections in modern medical curricula: a study on student perceptions . Anat Cell Biol 2015 ; 48 : 205 – 212 . 4 . Patel SB , Mauro D , Fenn J , Sharkey DR , Jones C . Is dissection the only way to learn anatomy? Thoughts from students at a nondissecting based medical school Perspect Med Educ 2015 ; 4 : 259 – 260 .