Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology Eighth Edition

Book Preface

We are very pleased to have this final opportunity to express our gratitude to all of you who have used previous editions of Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology and are considering adopting our eighth edition. We are pleased as well to wel-come new readers, and we thank you for choosing our book.
Anatomy and physiology remain cornerstones of many courses in health and medicine. The eighth edition of Essen-tials of Anatomy and Physiology remains a science textbook for beginning students, focused on presenting basic anatomy and physiology simply yet precisely and clearly, with the text complemented and enhanced by superb illustrations.

An instructional change in this edition, in response to re-quests, is the addition of a small set of questions for students at the end of each major section in a chapter. We have called these “Takeaways,” for we are not “checking up” on what students can recall after only one reading, but rather, in the form of questions, suggesting information for the students to take with them as they read further. Not everything that is important can be covered, but whatever is asked for is signif-icant, and not only in that one chapter, but often in later chapters as well. Within the human body are many different interconnections, some yet to be discovered but others we are aware of, and one purpose of the Takeaways is to begin to show that. The Takeaways and the Illustration Questions also form an ongoing self-quiz that students may find very useful. No time limit is given, and there is no penalty for incorrect answers. The answers to the Takeaways are in Appendix H, and to the Illustration Questions in Appendix G.

Also an instructional change, guidance for use of the text-book’s tables is provided for some of those in the first few chapters and some of the later ones as well. Our tables have several purposes: as summaries of text material (also very useful for studying), the presentation of related material (that an instructor may choose to include if time and indi-vidual course requirements permit), the delineation of sequences, and as simple lists when a list is better than nar-rative (as with the vitamins and minerals in Chapter 17). Some students may not be familiar with the reasons for and benefits of different sorts of tables and may be a bit unsure of how to use them, so we have made some suggestions we hope will be helpful.

As with every new edition, the text has been updated in many ways to remain as contemporary as possible. These include a more comprehensive introduction to the human being as microbiome in Chapter 1 and brief discussions of our major localized microbiomes (cutaneous, upper respiratory, oral and intestinal, and vaginal in Chapters 5, 15, 16, and 20, respectively), a little more about food (ice cream, chocolate, and coffee) in Chapter 2 on basic chemistry, a description of the gene editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 in Chapter 3, beige fat cells in Chapter 4, the introduction to autoimmune diseases in Chapter 5, a more complete discussion of exercise in Chapter 7, new summary tables in Chapter 9 for the eye and ear, the physiology of “ice-cream headache” and the mis-hearing of music lyrics also in Chapter 9, the most recent blood pressure guidelines in Chapter 13, herd immunity in Chapter 14, and the Zika virus in Chapters 21 and 22.

All of the For Further Thought sections end with at least one illustration question, and several more pictures have been added (Chapters 4, 6, 8, and 13). In most instances, when the students have labeled the picture and answered the questions, the whole then becomes an integral part of the chapter. We hope you will consider assigning these questions, and that students will find them enjoyable and helpful.
Colleagues, please keep in mind that the Instructor’s Guide contains a full list of even the small additions or revi-sions in the “New to This Edition” section for each chapter of the textbook, as well as detailed answers to all of the Review Questions and For Further Thought questions.

As always, your comments and suggestions will be most welcome, and they may be sent to us in care of the publisher: F. A. Davis Company, 1915 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103.

Valerie C. Scanlon Dobbs Ferry, New York
Tina Sanders
Castle Creek, New York