page_title: Gray's Anatomy
section_title: Currently available editions
hierarchical_section_title: Gray's Anatomy / Currently available editions
caption_attribution_description: The skull from the front.
context_page_description: Gray's Anatomy is an English written textbook of human anatomy originally written by Henry Gray and illustrated by Henry Vandyke Carter. Earlier editions were called Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical, Anatomy of the Human Body and Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Applied, but the book's name is commonly shortened to, and later editions are titled, Gray's Anatomy. The book is widely regarded as an extremely influential work on the subject, and continued to be revised and republished from its initial publication in 1858 to the present day. The latest edition of the book, the 41st, was published in September 2015.
context_section_description: The newest, 41st edition of Gray's Anatomy was published on 25 September 2015 by Elsevier in both print and online versions, and is the first edition to have enhanced online content including anatomical videos and a bonus Gray's imaging library. The 41st edition also has 24 specially invited online commentaries on contemporary anatomical topics such as advances in electron and fluorescent microscopy; the neurovascular bundles of the prostate; stem cells in regenerative medicine; the anatomy of facial aging; and technical aspects and applications of diagnostic radiology.
  The senior editor of this book and accompanying website on ExpertConsult is Professor Susan Standring, who is Emeritus Professor of Anatomy at King's College London. The three most recent editions differ from all previous editions in an important aspect: they present anatomical structures by their regional anatomy (i.e. ordered according to what part of the body the structures are located in – e.g. the anatomy of the bones, blood vessels and nerves, etc. of the upper extremity is described in one place). All editions of Gray's Anatomy previous to the 39th were organized by systemic anatomy (i.e. there were separate sections for the body's entire skeletal system, entire circulatory system and entire nervous system, etc.). The editors of the 39th edition acknowledged the validity of both approaches but switched to regional anatomy by popular demand.
  Older, out-of-copyright editions of the book continue to be reprinted and sold, particularly on the internet. However it is not always clear which (British or American) edition these books are republications of. Many seem to be reprints of the 1901 (probably U.S.) edition. Additionally, there are several sites where various older versions can be read online.
  Henry Gray wrote Gray's Anatomy with an audience of medical students and physicians in mind, especially surgeons. For many decades however, precisely because Gray's textbook became such a classic, successive editors made major efforts to preserve its position as possibly the most authoritative text on the subject in English. Toward this end, a long-term strategy appears to have been to make each edition come close to containing a fully comprehensive account of the anatomical medical understanding available at the time of publication. The explosion of medical knowledge in the 20th century led to a vast expansion of the book, which threatened to collapse under its own weight metaphorically and physically. From the 35th edition onward, increased efforts were made to reverse this trend and keep the book readable by students. Nevertheless, the 38th edition contained 2,092 pages in large format – the highest page count of any and an increase from the 35th edition, which had 1,471 pages. The current 41st edition has 1,584 pages.
  Newer editions of Gray's Anatomy – and even several recent older ones – are still considered to be the most comprehensive and detailed textbooks on the subject.
  Despite previous efforts to keep Gray's Anatomy readable by students, when the 39th edition was published, students were identified as a secondary market for the book, and companion publications such as Gray's Anatomy for Students, Gray's Atlas of Anatomy and Gray's Anatomy Review have also been published in recent years.
caption: An illustration from the American 1918 edition
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