Talk:Gray's Anatomy

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Contents

[edit] Bartleby.com

THOROUGHLY REVISED AND RE-EDITED BY WARREN H. LEWIS ILLUSTRATED WITH 1247 ENGRAVINGS

PHILADELPHIA: LEA & FEBIGER, 1918 NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 2000

Does this mean that the text on their site is NOT public domain? Is there any electronic source containing the unabridged contents of this book?

What about the images? Surely I can't just colour-in a public domain source, then claim copyright?? Coz that's all they've done.

thanks for your help :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tristanb (talk • contribs) 2003-04-14T10:24:49

IANAL, but I would think that Bartleby might possibly be able to claim copyright on the specific HTML pages they've put up — not however on the text or any unmodified pictures. So you can't just copy a HTML page from their site and stick it on yours, but you should be ok to copy passages of any length, because they don't own copyright on the text (or, again, unmodified images).
Ropers 00:12, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Refused permission

I was looking for some illustrations to add to my site www.everyday-taichi.com - specifically I wanted to show the link between various tai chi exercises and the muscles they use.

I asked Bartelby for permission to use some of their Gray's Anatomy illustrations - and they refused. I understand that if they add significant original content that the work becomes "new" but I thought that the old stuff was availble to copy.

Does this mean that any action to convert the book into a web page makes it original and hence creates a new copyright?

Does this mean I need to find an actual physical book and scan it myself?

Or is there another on line source of this edition?

  • They refused? Hah! They can refuse all they want, but it's public domain! Anything they have added value to by modifying may be their property, but the actual original text and images are public domain, through and through. So you can use it. -- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 17:41, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
  • They probably own the rights to the newer versions (since they have modified them & reworked the illustrations). But the older ones must still be public domain. I am not that familiar with the copyright status of books and illustrations that are constantly reedited, but based on what I know from the Gutenberg Project (take "Moby Dick" for instance), you MUST make a fresh copy/scan (by yourself) from an old edition. You can't use a scanned (digital) picture without the owner's acknowledgement (the jpg image by itself is protected by copyright laws). I would suggest that you make your own scans from the 1918 edition, if it is available in "paper" media and if you can secure the right to make such copies in a public library. 207.134.187.165 (talk) 08:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
  • See also: http://www.freeworldu.org/publicdomain.htm 207.134.187.165 (talk) 08:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I quite got it. If the illustrations in a new edition of Gray's Anatomy would have been identical to the old ones, could I have scanned them from a book of the new edition? —Bromskloss (talk) 23:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regular Expressions

Here's a handy-dandy regular expression I use when gathering text from the Bartelby site. It converts headings into wiki-headings:

\n\([a-zA-Z0-9./-]+\).\x97

to

\n=== \1 ===\n

This is for the Textpad search-and-replace function, which I believe uses POSIX. -- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 17:45, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

Gray's Anatomy (39th Edition) should be criticised properly. As a medical student I expected it to be a exhaustive work on anatomy. However, I was shocked by omissions in the start of the course itself. Case in point: Erb's paralysis. It is one of the first things a medical student is taught about. Its coverage in Gray's is cavalier. There is *no mention* of Erb's Point, nor a systematic appraisal of the causes, signs, and anatomical peculiarities of Erb's paralysis. All there is is a paragraph ib blurb form. I am sure this stupidity is perpetrated in other sections as well. Some fellow doctors should please review the 39th edition and post their views.

The anonymous writer from 221.134.161.76 complains that Gray's Anatomy does not give a comprehensive account of Erb's palsy. Even though a lecture on the anatomy of the brachial plexus might mention common injuries, most people would not expect to find full clinical details in a basic science textbook. Even a work on clinical or applied anatomy would cover only a few aspects of a specific injury like this. The obvious places to look would be textbooks of neurology, orthopaedics, or paediatrics. NRPanikker 02:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with NRPanikker. The 'criticism' above is wholly unjustified. Hovea 12:51, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Please allow me to clarify myself. First, textbooks of neurology, orthopaedics, or paediatrics (leaving aside the questionable value of the last two mentioned sources) are *not* at all accessible to a freshman medical student, while clinical aspects of anatomy (what NRPanikker calls ``applied anatomy) are quite important in view of the new anatomy teaching methodology being followed in medical colleges, at least in India. Just for comparison purposes, I refer NRPanikker to B. D. Chaurasia's _Human Anatomy_, 4th edition. It contains a concise, lucid, and reasonably complete (for this level) description of clinical features of brachial plexus injuries, including Erb's paralysis and Klumpke's paralysis, among others. When such a ``low-quality' (and chock full of mistakes) book such as BDC is able to provide such information, is it too much to expect better, or at least the same, from the so-called ``Bible of Anatomy? No wonder medical students are forced to learn anatomy by trial-and-error using books such as BDC. Gray's is a complete let-down. P.S.: Forget about Erb's paralysis for a moment; but at least Erb's Point (an anatomical feature with obvious future clinical importance) could have been described? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.134.186.136 (talk) 13:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


Gray's is a textbook of ANATOMY. Erb's Palsy is not Anatomy, it is a pathology. A clinically orientated anatomy text may choose to include such content but it is beyond the scope of a text on pure anatomy. To permit this criticism one could furthermore criticize the omission of physiology, immunology, histology (etc) from its content also... I know of no text that is so comprehensive on the subject of medicine as to include all fields of the biomedical sciences in great detail. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.210.159.101 (talk) 02:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright law

I read a long time ago that the reason for the divergence of the UK and US editions of Gray's Anatomy was that the US did not recognise copyright in books published abroad until well into the 20th century: so the US publisher was able to make his own new editions without reference (or payment) to the British authors. American publishers were free, according to this account, to translate or reprint foreign books. This obviously suited the developping industrial economy, until the tables were turned in the post-war age, and the US now takes the lead in enforcing intellectual property rights across the world. I don't know whether this story is consistent with American publishing or legal history. NRPanikker 01:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The U.S. had copyright laws, but according to the constitution they were supposed to be for "fixed terms", actually quite a short period by modern comparisons. It was only after the motion picture industry started its lobby that the current system of donating 20 years of public domain rights to the great-grandchildren of publishers every 20 years was established. See copyright extension (hmm, actually that article is in sorry shape). 70.15.116.59 15:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia usage

Because of the importance of public domain images from Gray's in so many Wikipedia articles, I think that this article should explain what the latest public domain version is, where it can be found (is it only digitized on a site that claims copyright that Wikipedia believes to be invalid?), what the legal situation regarding use of the images is (as people here are discussing; especially, is digitization = faithful reproduction), etc. Obviously the people talking here know all this - so put it clearly in the article for the rest of us. Wikipedia has become notable enough to be worth mentioning. 70.15.116.59 15:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)