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Anatomy vs Pathology - What's the difference?

anatomy | pathology |

As nouns the difference between anatomy and pathology

is that anatomy is the art of studying the different parts of any organized body, to discover their situation, structure, and economy; dissection while pathology is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences.

anatomy

English

(wikipedia anatomy)

Noun

(anatomies)
  • The art of studying the different parts of any organized body, to discover their situation, structure, and economy; dissection.
  • The science that deals with the form and structure of organic bodies; anatomical structure or organization.
  • * (John Dryden)
    • Let the muscles be well inserted and bound together, according to the knowledge of them which is given us by anatomy .
    Animal anatomy'' is also called zomy or zootomy; ''vegetable anatomy,'' phytotomy; and ''human anatomy, anthropotomy.
  • A treatise or book on anatomy.
  • The act of dividing anything, corporeal or intellectual, for the purpose of examining its parts; analysis; as, the anatomy of a discourse.
  • (colloquial) The form of an individual, particularly a person, used in a tongue in cheek manner, as might be a term used by a medical professional, but in a markedly a less formal context, in which a touch of irony becomes apparent.
  • (archaic) A skeleton, or dead body.
  • *, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1 p.68:
    • So did the Ægyptians, who in the middest of their banquetings, and in the full of their greatest cheere, caused the anatomie of a dead man to be brought before them, as a memorandum and warning to their guests.
  • The physical or functional organization of an organism, or part of it.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
    • , title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy . Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.}}

    Derived terms

    * anatomically correct * comparative anatomy * gross anatomy

    See also

    * phytotomy * zootomy

    pathology

    English

    Noun

    (pathologies)
  • (medicine) The branch of medicine concerned with the study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences.
  • The medical specialty that provides microscopy and other laboratory services (e.g., cytology, histology) to clinicians.
    • The surgeon sent a specimen of the cyst to the pathology department for staining and analysis to determine its histologic subtype.
  • Pathosis: any deviation from a healthy or normal structure or function; abnormality; illness or malformation.

    • Derived terms

    * pathologist * anatomical pathology * chemical pathology * cytopathology * experimental pathology * forensic pathology * histopathology * plant pathology * psychopathology

    Related terms

    * pathologic * pathological * pathobiology * pathophysiology

    Usage notes

    * Some house style guides for medical publications avoid the "illness" sense of pathology'' (disease, state of ill health) and replace it with ''pathosis''. The rationale is that the ''-ology'' form should be reserved for the "study of disease" sense and for the medical specialty that provides microscopy and other laboratory services (e.g., cytology, histology) to clinicians. This rationale drives similar usage preferences about ''etiology'' ("cause" sense versus "study of causes" sense), ''methodology'' ("methods" sense versus "study of methods" sense), and other ''-ology'' words. Not all such , because most physicians don't do so in their own speech (and the context makes clear the sense intended). Another limitation is that ''pathology'' meaning "illness" has an adjectival form (''pathologic''), but the corresponding adjectival form of ''pathosis'' (''pathotic'') is idiomatically missing from English (defective declension), so ''pathologic'' is obligate for both senses ("diseased" and "related to the study of disease"); this likely helps keep the "illness" sense of ''pathology'' in natural use (as the readily retrieved noun counterpart to ''pathologic in the "diseased" sense).