Sharpey's Restaurant in the Haversian Inn

Anyone who has taken my anatomy class in the last couple of years knows that I complain about the renaming of anatomical structures that has been taking place over the past 10 years or so. Every semester I joke about the all-new, improved anatomy textbook WE are going to write -- but until then, we are stuck with these boring and unacceptable new names for things. The joking is over! I've got a blog now, so I'm gonna write something!
                                                             
Alright then, let us begin, calmly, with a brief introduction of a few of the Old World names for body parts, and compare them with the new nomenclature:


OLD WORLD NAME ---------------------- NEW
                                                                             NOMENCLATURE
Islets of Langerhans                                         Pancreatic islets
     This is by far the source of my greatest sadness. "Islets of Langerhans" rrrrrolllls off the tongue so nicely, especially if you have a German, Dutch, or Swedish accent. I always imagine Julie Andrews singing the intro to "The Sound of Music" when I say the name "Langerhans." Yes, I know the von Trapps were in Austria, and I don't think any of the actors in that movie were actually Austrian. No matter. A German anatomist named Paul Langerhans discovered these collections of cells in the pancreas in 1869, and his name has been printed in medical texts ever since. Until 1998, that is, with the publication of that year's "Terminologia Anatomica," developed by the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists and the Federative Committee on Anatomical Terminology (a mouthful, I know). Apparently, there has been a lot of politics between the two groups, and I'm not into politics, but in the end, everyone seemed to have decided that practical names that spoke to location or function or origin would make more sense than names of long-dead scientists. And, so, we continue...

Merkel cell                                                        Tactile epithelial cell
     Oh, come on, people! Is this seriously an argument? "Tactile epithelial cell" is about as dry as it gets, while "Merkel cell," ah, "Merkel cell" -- I can hear the ripples of laughter from my 4-year-old's entire being as I tickle him and trigger those little touch receptors located in the stratum basale of the epidermis, discovered in 1875 by Friedrich Sigmund Merkel. Moving on...

Haversian system                                             Osteon
     Not as bad as the other two changes, but still. "Osteon" is very practical, while "Haversian system," named after the physician who first described them, Clopton Havers, in 1957... to be honest, that makes me think of opening a quaint inn on a lake in Wisconsin and calling it the Haversian Inn. When I mentioned this on a whim to my Santa Monica College class recently, we decided that there would be a restaurant in the inn called Sharpey's. Which is a nice segue (not Segway) to...

Sharpey's fibers                                                Perforating fibers
     Sharpey's fibers anchor the periosteal covering of bone to the bone tissue itself. OK, sure, they perforate the bone tissue and that's how the periosteum stays on, like Velcro. But why not give William Sharpey credit for the work he did in 1846?

This is only the tip of the iceberg. This list will continue! The Old World names will live on! And we will open Sharpey's Restaurant inside the Haversian Inn on the shore of an idyllic lake in the fingertip part of the glove shape of Wisconsin.

In the meantime, for your perusal, listed from cheapest to priciest. I haven't looked through these, but they probably use them newfangled terms, though the Netter book has the best chance of still using traditional terminology because Frank Netter, M.D. created all of his amazing paintings in the mid-1900s.