Learning Gross: A Book About Your Gross Anatomy Class

Learning Gross presents the core concepts of how to succeed as a student or professor in an essential Gross Anatomy class. Dr. Forbes goes where no one else has gone - to the inner workings of an excellent Human Anatomy course - and describes in detail the rare experience of a semester spent exploring the human body.

Learning Gross is a valuable tool for succeeding in a Gross Anatomy class. In felicitous prose, it is a meditation on what it takes to present and receive an excellent Anatomy course, deftly assembled and stuffed with facts and information. Those concepts are presented with clarity in a comprehensive format, for easy reference by the reader.

If you are a professor, this book can transform the way you present your class. If you're a student, how will you approach the sheer volume of information presented in a Gross Anatomy course? This book will help you retain the content of the course throughout your matriculation, and into your clinical practice.

The book discusses learning the physical anatomy. Then, with an imaginative wit, it presents, between each two chapters, a little of the metaphysical, embodied in a trenchant conversation with one of the donor bodies in his laboratory.

Unlike other books about cadaver courses written by laypeople attending a Gross Anatomy course, this book is written by an academic who has spent his life in that milieu. It is a special perspective, one that equips the writer to present you with practical, authentic advice on what it takes to succeed.

Excerpt from the Book

For most people, what's inside the body is a great mystery. Haven't you found that to be so? Most people entertain vague ideas about where organs are located, what they do, and how they work. But for those of us who study human gross anatomy, it's different. For those of us who have the splendid opportunity to explore the body for ourselves, to actually see for ourselves the beauty and grace inside the human body, and to learn its secrets in order to better serve our patients, it's a compelling, once-in-a-lifetime revelation. Ours is a uniquely privileged study, and that study would be impossible except for the unrequitable thoughtfulness of people we've never met, who had the charity to give to us what was their most intimate home for seventy, eighty, ninety years.

We begin that study as strangers - strangers to the human body and strangers to each other - and we invariably finish as good friends to both. I'm happy you haven't missed this rare opportunity. And someday, when you're really old, twenty, thirty, forty years after you graduate, when you've achieved your goals and you are a practicing healthcare professional, you will have occasion to get a whiff of formaldehyde, and that will cause you to remember. You'll remember the Anatomy Lab, the names of your lab partners and instructors, and your donor body. And you'll reflect on what is called the "music" of the Anatomy Laboratory: the sound of learning, the sound of discovery, the sound of students teaching other students, all throughout the room. And you will recall that lovely aroma in the lab.

And here's the thing: when you remember, you will smile. I promise you will.