Ah well. Maybe it'll be able to teach me how to paint. I've certainly not had much luck trying to teach myself.
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Now, to today's title. Further to my botanical thoughts from yesterday (oh! Should I throw out a few pointless botany terms before I go on? Ok, let me see... how about diadelphous? Glabrous? Acuminate? All perfectly good words in the world of plants), I ended up back in the more comfortable world of zoology last night when I was trying to come up with something for this week's Illustration Friday prompt.
The word was fluid. So what would you expect to do from that? Raindrops, maybe? Cocktails would have been all right. A lake would've done. Me? I drew blood vessels.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Look up the reason here if you're desperate to. I'm not going to type it twice.
Once I got on the track of arteries, I needed some reference material. Oddly enough, I don't carry around the structures of the body in my head anymore. There was a time when I could have made at least a rough sketch of the major vessels from memory, but that was a lot of years ago and (again, oddly enough) I don't do much dissection these days. Or any at all, really. That is, unless you count taking apart a pork roast to fit it into the slow cooker.
I make pretty decent pulled pork, you know.
Where was I? Oh yeah, reference material. And after the pulled pork thing, my crab salad sandwich really isn't going to cut it for lunch.
Anyway, I started flipping through my old dissection manuals looking for a likely subject. And yes, I do realise that some of you are officially grossed out by the fact that I kept my old dissection manuals, but hey. I'm in the nature business, remember? Occasionally they come in handy if someone's brought in a random bone or something for identification. And they don't stink of formalin anymore. Well, not much, anyway. The random staining would probably be disturbing to a lot of people, but...
Sorry. I'm distracting myself. My head's still not working quite right, which is part of the reason for last night's arterial extravaganza. I had a couple of other ideas, but I didn't think I'd be able to get my brain around them.
Back to topic. Obviously there's going to be a lot of terminology in an anatomy book. It's more comfortable terminology to me than the botany stuff, but these days I have to pause and think about some of those words to get the hamster wheel going, if you know what I mean. I can't exactly rattle them off like I used to be able to.
Which makes the notes kind of fascinating, in a weird way.
I took notes in my lab manuals, you see. It was easier to scribble in the margins (and all over the covers for the longer stuff) than to take out another notebook. Which, to be honest, probably would have just gained a bunch of all-too-identifiable stains. Better to keep that to the one book, right?
The notes and drawings are in my handwriting, of course. Reading them now, though, makes me feel a little like I have a split personality. Somebody was able to spell those twenty-letter words (only slightly exaggerating there). Somebody had all the muscles in a cat's neck and shoulder memorised. It sure the heck wasn't me.
Not anymore, at any rate. And incidentally, flipping through that cat book reminded me just how oddly braided a cat's shoulder muscles look. It's amazing. You should look it up. Or I will, if you like. That'll save you all the pictures of actual dead cats stretched out on dissection trays.
You're welcome.
Anyway, I know that I'm not the only one who could look back at old university notes -- I don't care what subject -- and be slightly astonished at how much I knew when I was intensively having to know. Do I know less now? No, I don't think so. I know different. I'm not in a lab every day, so I don't use the lab stuff much. Ask me how much I would have known about the wildlife in an aspen forest back in university, though. Not nearly as much as I know now. Back then I was learning how to be a specialist; today I have to know how to be a generalist.
I'm good with how things turned out. Still sometimes miss the labs, though. Even the formalin. And I never thought I'd say that.
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Just a note for anyone who's disgusted by the talk of dissection in both of today's blog posts: I studied zoology. Dissection was a vital part of learning anatomy. It always will be, no matter how good computer simulation gets. To really understand how a body works you have to do more than just stare at a screen. You have to be able to touch, feel, see how things move... and compare them with other things. You really do, and I wouldn't trade my anatomical training for anything.
Having said that, though, I'm going to say something that might surprise you: I'd like to see dissection taken out of high school biology courses. Seriously. On a practical note, the bulk specimens they buy are usually crap and you can't see anything anyway. On a moral (if you will) note, it's pointless to kill a bunch of animals when the vast majority of kids who take biology will never do a thing with it once they're out of school. So how do you teach the few who will use it about anatomy? That's the place for computer and plastic models. I don't deny at all that they're a great place to start, and that's how it should be done for beginners. Anything else is just the gross-out factor of having a group of kids cut open a dead thing, and that's a stupid and pointless waste.
Um.
Thus endeth the lecture?
I have to get back to work now.
1 comment:
It's creepy isn't it to go back and read what you wrote say 15 years ago. I looked at some poetry I wrote maybe 10 or 15 years ago and don't even remember writing it. Maybe automatic writing is REAL. ha. Noticing how your blood vessels also resemble tree roots. Interesting thought. Roots, blood vessels. Same same. Also, you can use salt water to replace blood to a certain point. Religious groups have done this. And, I have a superstition about biopsy's aka cancer. Don't believe in them. Actually don't really believe in touching cancer. Just leave it alone and find out what you have been doing wrong aka immune system which let it get the upper hand. I am making peace with my cancer. And making my body inhabitable to it. Think about biopsy. In tree's, if we cut off something, it grows more. hmmm. So I had them take out my complete tumor and send the entire thing off for biopsy. You have to follow medical protocol or no doctor will touch you. Lawsuits and such. Unless you are a millionaire, then you can do whatever you want for treatment. I think we are ass backwards in cancer treatments. Just my thoughts. IS IT SPRING YET? Sick of winter up here. Rain, cold, Rain, Ice. No snow, nothing pretty about winters here. Ok my Rant is over.
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