Understanding The Human Body: An Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology

You live with it 24 hours a day. But how well do you really know it? These 32 lectures are your owner’s manual to a remarkably complex, resilient, and endlessly fascinating structure: the human body. Your guide is Dr. Anthony A. Goodman—surgeon, professor, and writer—who takes you step by step through the major systems of the body, explaining exactly how things work and why they sometimes don’t.

Using detailed color illustrations, life-sized models, and, in one lecture, a video shot during surgery, Dr. Goodman gives clear descriptions of structure (anatomy) and function (physiology) aimed at the level of the interested layperson.

“One can tell he has explained these topics to everyone from children to adults,” an enthusiastic viewer wrote to The Teaching Company.

A Systems Approach

Dr. Goodman’s approach differs from anatomy lab in medical school, with which he has extensive teaching experience. By necessity, medical students dissecting cadavers must study all of the organs in one area before moving on to the next. They simply cannot dissect the entire nervous system; then go back and dissect the vascular system; then, the gastrointestinal system; and so on.

By contrast, this course introduces anatomy by systems and depends on illustrations, not cadavers. Dr. Goodman correlates the findings in anatomy with the functioning of the normal human body, its physiology.

About the Author

Dr. Anthony A. Goodman is Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Montana State University and Affiliate Professor in the Department of Biological Structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He earned his B.A. from Harvard College and his M.D. from Cornell Medical College and trained as a surgical intern and resident at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. He completed his surgical training and served as chief resident at the Harvard Surgical Service of Boston City Hospital, the New England Deaconess Hospital, the Lahey Clinic, and Cambridge City Hospital.

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