The Basic Library Tour
The Visual Tour of the
Unusually Wonderful
Virtual Hospital is an on-line digital health library that is based on the philosophy that learning is an apprenticeship, and that apprentice learners--health care providers and patients--need convenient access to authoritative information. The Virtual Hospital delivers information to health care providers at the point-of-care to help them take better care of their patients and delivers information to patients at home to help them live healthier lives.
Like our brick-and-mortar counterparts, we organize our library of information by audience and by discipline. Think of Virtual Hospital as having four major sections.
First, we divide our collection in two, with material for adult health and material for pediatric health.
You know you're in the adult section when you see the Virtual Hospital
logo at the top of a page.
And
you're in the pediatric section when you see the Virtual Children's
Hospital logo.
Next, we divide each of these two sections in two. We grouped the material that's written with patients in mind and the material that's written with providers in mind. You'll be glad to know that we don't believe in putting barriers between our sections. You as a user are free to explore titles within any of our four main sections: adult patient, adult provider, pediatric patient, and pediatric provider.
Suppose you're an adult patient looking for information about a skin condition. You can choose to browse our collection in two ways--by medical discipline or by specific topic.
If you browse by medical discipline, you'll find a link to our dermatology (skin health) books on our patient textbooks page. That link will show you all of the books we have in the collection in the field of dermatology.
If you browse by specific topic, say psoriasis, you'll go to our patient topics A-Z page and find the link for psoriasis. There you'll find all of the titles dealing with that topic.
You've probably noticed by now that those topics pages will list for you all of our texts--whether for the adult, pediatric, patient, and provider categories. Again, we're interested in getting you to information that will help you, regardless of how it's catalogued in our library.
We know from user feedback that Virtual Hospital and Virtual Children's Hospital resources are used by people for many reasons. We've put together pages with links that can help people with varying needs make the most of our collection.
Medical Students - Many of our textbooks were written with the specific learning and reference needs of medical students in mind. We highlight those resources within our collection and point to some other excellent Web resources for medical students.
K-12 Teachers and Students - We know that teachers use Virtual Hospital material for classroom demonstrations and as a reference tool for their students to use. And, students write us their thanks for useful material they've found and turned into school reports and research projects.
Health Reporters - Journalists are frequently looking for a quick summary of a disease or condition or a helpful illustration to accompany their reporting. We've collected a set of resources with those needs in mind.
Medical Specialists - The specialists who direct Virtual Hospital's publishing have collected this page of resources that can refine a specialist's search of material from other authoritative medical information sites on the Web.
For Kids - We've collected information written especially for kids, and in some cases, information written by kids. The emphasis is on fun and on learning through the use of quality information resources.
For Teens - Don't let the word "children" in Virtual Children's Hospital fool you. The pediatric specialists who write material for Virtual Children's Hospital offer a lot of helpful, healthful information for teens.
The Visual Tour of the Unusually Wonderful
Sometimes its the unusual things that stick with us better than the usual. Even an unusual look at something normal can have an impact. In its collection, Virtual Hospital has included a wealth of images--ordinary and extraordinary--to help give patients and providers a better understanding of how the body works when it's healthy and when it's affected by disease or injury. Here are some titles with images that may intrigue you:
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Human Anatomic Variation - Anatomy professor Ron Bergman has made it a career-long passion to catalog all the different ways that human bodies can vary from what we might consider normal. His modern and historical references include variations of the muscular system, the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, the endocrine, gastrointestinal, genitourinary and respiratory systems, and the skeletal system.
X-rays in motion - Gathered from a number of imaging textbooks in the Virtual Hospital collection come these images of ordinary body parts seen in motion in extraordinary ways.
Atlas of Human Anatomy in Cross Section - Anatomy professor Ron Bergman took on the fascinating project of documenting what the human anatomy looks like when it is cut into thin slices from the top of the skull down to the soles of the feet. Using a body donated for this purpose, Bergman's team painstakingly made the cross-sectional cuts and photographed the tissues over a several-month period. They also carefully cataloged every visible body part in each tissue slice. The results are fascinating. Here are sample views from each of the major body areas shown in this unique perspective:
The Human Brain: Dissections of the Real Brain - The brain is an organ of wonder and amazement. This presentation of photographs of dissected human brains is no less amazing in its study of brain architecture. The museum-quality images are accompanied by detailed drawings that label the anatomical features of the many-faceted organ. Whether you view classic images of what we think the brain looks like, or unusual views of the brain and the spinal cord, you will come away with a new appreciation of this marvelous organ system that controls the rest of the body.
View through a tube - Doctors have clever ways of viewing the body in order to make a diagnosis. Using a tube that has a tiny TV camera on its end, an endoscope can be used to examine the gastro-intestinal tract. Our GI Endoscopy Atlas offers some amazing views--from esophagus to stomach to small intestine to colon to rectum and places in between. A similar tube, the bronchoscope, is used to examine the airways in the lungs. Our Bronchoscopy Atlas shows the ins and outs of breathing along the larynx, the trachea, the main branches of the lungs, and the smaller airways.
Your five senses viewed through a microscope - Ever wonder about those parts of our body responsible for the senses of vision, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching? In his "Special Senses" chapter of his book Atlas of Microscopic Anatomy, anatomy professor Ronald Bergman and his colleagues deomonstrate the architectural intricacy of our cells when viewed under the microscope. Similarly, in Dr. Frank Mitros's book Atlas of Liver Pathology, a vital organ like the liver takes on a dazzling display of shape and color when affected by certain diseases and viewed under a microscope.
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