Students with aspirations to careers in health sciences and medicine receive fundamentals for acquiring more precise knowledge of human development, and students on their way to graduate school obtain contemporary information on the known and unknown sides of embryos. Embryology also serves as a reference, a lexicon, a source of data, and a window to the literature of embryology. Classical embryology begins with reproductive physiology, gametes, and gametogenesis in Part 3, and the embryo's own development begins with fertilization in Part 4. Parts 5-9 are organized chronologically as the embryo unfolds. The sections present increasingly complex subject matter and concepts.
Description gives way to analysis, and a comparative approach yields to experimentation.
Conceding to the practical limitations, the book focuses on vertebrates for its final chapters and more or less ends at the point where the mammalian embryo transits into a fetus. Each part is followed by Summary and Highlights, Questions for Discussion, and Recommended Readings. These are all intended to aid study by pointing the way backward or forward to information or by jogging memory. Key words and species are listed in the Index. Numbers in boldface identify pages in the text containing definitions.