D'ANDREA, Vito

MALINOVSKY L.

English

Archivio della ricerca- Università di Roma La Sapienza

LETTER TO THE EDITORTeaching of Anatomy: a Job for a Biologist or a Surgeon?Dear Sir,During thè past few years there has been a con-siderable stir about spurious qualifications and thèpractice of medicine and dentistry by people who arenot qualified in medicine and surgery but nave quackdiplomas to hang in their offices.There is also an area in which teaching by peoplelacking a medicai degree is actually legitimised by thèauthorities, and that is thè teaching of anatomy, afundamental discipline in thè curriculum of studiesof thè physician-surgeon that is often entrusted tobiologists. It may be that they can teach a certainamount of microscopie anatomy and embryology, andso cover thè same ground as histology, which was aminor discipline up to 15 years ago but is now a majorone.What they are certainly not equipped to teach isthè sort of macroscopic and topographical anatomythat is really of use to medicai undergraduates becausebiologists do not know what is important in medicine,particularly in surgery. It is not possible to teachanatomy as a science, but it is necessary to teachclinical anatomy.So thè teaching becomes theoretical, strong onslides and weak on practice with no work on cadavers,thè essential test bench and training for physician-surgeons who do not want to be excluded from thèEuropean circuii. In Italy practical anatomy is nolonger taught as it is done in some other westernand eastern countries. We think that there are threereasons for this grave gap in thè training of Italiandoctors: thè lack of bodies for thè dissection room;thè presence of too many biologists among lecturersin human anatomy in thè faculties of medicine andsurgery; and lack of experience in dissection amonglecturers.There is now a remedy for thè first of these causes:thè new law on thè donation of organs for trans-plantation, already approved by thè Senate HealthGommittee, which provides for thè donation of thèwhole body as well as thè organs for teaching andsdentine purposes.The availability of bodies must, however, bematched by that of a body of lecturers competent toteach practical anatomy, and we do not think thatbiologists are equipped to do this. Not only are theynot allowed by law to dissect bodies, but also they donot know how to.So thè second cause is much harder to remedy.Biologists, who have taken over thè teaching ofhuman anatomy, have to stay in thè laboratories andleave thè dissection room to others. Human anatomymust be taught in thè dissection room and not in thèlaboratory.It is to be hoped that surgeons, whose forebearsconferred such distinction on thè discipline of humananatomy - Raglivi, Lancisi, Malpighi and Morgagni,to name but a few - may return to thè chairs ofanatomy of thè faculties of medicine and surgery fromwhich they have been ousted by biologists, who shouldgo back to teaching biology students.Vita D'Andrea Lubomir MalinovskyFausto Biancori 3rd Department of General3rd Chair of Normal Human SurgeryAnatomy University "La Sapienza"University "La Sapienza" Policlinico Umberto IRome RomeItaly Italy©1996 Scandinavia!! University Press. ISSN 1102-4151 Eur J Surg 162

Teaching of Anatomy:a job for a biologist or a surgeon?

https://iris.uniroma1.it/bitstream/11573/109014/1/Surgeon.pdf

Teaching of Anatomy:a job for a biologist or a surgeon?

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