That of the Organization of the Body

     Throughout my blogs I have explained various functions of the body, but I've never focused on the bod as a whole. How can we address what the body is capable of without first understanding it's awesome organization. Aside from it being really helpful and essential to body knowledge review, this post will go over terms that are used in scans, terms that are applied to areas of the body and directional terms. Okay cool let's go.

     When looking at the body in a dissection or in a science book, it will always be placed in a certain way referred to as the anatomical position. It has the body lying on it's dorsal side (on it's back, but that comes later.) with palms facing up and thumbs away from the body. The position also has the feet set slightly apart. To show you this position I used a really old Raggedy Andy doll... Because he had thumbs.

Totally anatomically accurate.

     The body has directions which are referred to by Doctors and old guys (i.e. "My posterier aches!"), but it's important to know, though you may already know some- like Dorsal (like the fin on marine beauties) and posterior (previously mentioned in reference to the booty).  The next set of pictures will display other directions and planes.

Inferior is the direction toward the feet and superior is the direction toward the head.

Anterior is the direction toward the front of the body while posterior is the direction                             toward the back of the body, hence the posterior being a synonym for booty.

Proximal is the direction from the extremity to the point of                                                                     attachment in this case from the wrist or foot to the shoulder or thigh/hip.

Distal is basically the opposite of proximal. So it's the direction from the                                                 attachment point towards the extremity, or from the shoulder to the hand.

From the middle line in the body, the direction going away from the middle is Lateral.

Alternatively, Medial is the direction towards the middle division of the body.

     The body can be divided into various 'planes' which are 'slices' that would be scanned. Different planes are required for different types of scans, such as a CAT scan takes a Median plane scan. The transverse plane would vertically scan from the top of the head to the feet (or vice-versa I don't make the rules){This will divide the body into superior and inferior}. The median plane would be scanned from one hand to the other. Frontal scans would take from the tip of the nose to the end of the booty (dividing the body into Anterior and Posterior). An oblique is rarely seen on purpose, as it is mostly an accidental diagonal scan due the movement of the patient. Not shown in the picture is the way your body can be divided as you may see on some displays. The first is Sagittal, which divides the body into left and right halves and the second is Midsagittal which would divide the body into a top and bottom half.

      With planes aside, we can focus on the inside of the body and it's cavities. The Dorsal cavity protects the nervous system, the cranial houses and protects the brain (who'd have thought?!), the vertebral contains and protects the spine, and the ventral holds all internal organs and can be divided into thoracic region and Abdominal-Pelvic region. The pleural cavity encases the lungs; the mediastinum cavity surrounds the thoracic organs and the pericardial cavity houses the heart. The abdominal cavity (abs aha) contain abdominal organs like the intestines and stomach while the pelvic encases the pelvic organs like the bladder and reproductive organs.

     The skin also has it's own levels, being deep and superficial. Deep is below the surface and superficial is at skin level. Here's a less than accurate representation.

                          See the superficial?                                                             See how crazy deep that is?

     Thus concludes the incredible organization of the body represented through an antique doll.