We believe that this new edition of our textbook will help learners by building on the strengths of previous editions while using new and innovative ways to help students visualize connections between various concepts. Three unifying themes that have helped to organize and set the tone of this textbook continue to be valid and are retained in this edition. These themes are: Interrelationships of body organ systems. This theme empha-sizes the fact that nearly all regulatory mechanisms have interactions with several organ systems.
The respiratory system, for example, cannot carry out its role of gas exchange in the body if there are problems with the cardiovascular system that prevent the normal delivery of blood throughout the body. The System Connections feature and Make Connections questions throughout the book help students connect new information to old information and think of the body as a community of dynamic parts instead of a number of independent units.
Homeostasis is the normal and most desirable condition of the body. Its loss is always associated with past or present pathology. Whenever students see a red balance beam symbol accompanied by an associated clinical topic, their understanding of how the body works to stay in balance is reinforced. Complementarity of struct ure and function. This theme encourages students to understand the structure of some body part ranging from a molecule to an organ in order to understand the function of that structure.
For example, muscle cells can produce movement because they are contractile cells. New and augmented elements aim to help learners in the fol -lowing ways.
To help students make connections between new and previously learned material. These icons direct the student back to the specific pages where a concept was first introduced. To answer these questions, the student must e,nploy concepts learned previously 1nost often in previous chapters. Each chapter now has at least five higher-level questions that require students to think more deeply, pulling together strands from multiple concepts.
Two complementary branches of science—anatomy and physiology—provide the concepts that help us to understand the human body. Anatomy studies the structure of body parts and their relationships to one another. Anatomy has a certain appeal because it is concrete. Body structures can be seen, felt, and examined closely; it is not necessary to imagine what they look like. Physiology concerns the function of the body, in other words, how the body parts work and carry out their life-sustaining activities.
When all is said and done, physiology is explainable only in terms of the underlying anatomy. Do you like this book? Our clinical backgrounds have served our teaching and writing purposes well. Perhaps even more important, our clinical experience has allowed us to view our presentations through our students eyes and from the vantage points of their career interests. For this edition, as for those preceding it, feedback from both student and instructor reviews indicated areas of the text that needed to be revised for clarity, timeliness, and just plain reduction of verbal meatiness.
Overall, feedback was positive, verifying that the approach of explaining fundamental principles and unifying themes first as a strong base for all that comes later is still viable. Furthermore, it is clear that backing up these explanations with comfortable analogies and familiar examples enhances the students understanding of the workings of the human body. The Eighth Edition represents a monumental revision with an entirely new art program and text presentation that build upon the hallmark strengths of the previous seven editions.
With every edition, our goal is powerful but simple to make anatomy and physiology as engaging, accurate, and relevant as possible for both you and your students. Key concepts are important because of the overwhelming amount of material in this course.
Mastering this material gives students an anchor and structure for managing this wealth of information.
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