From Julien Bouglé’s 1899 anatomy atlas: Le corpus humain et grandeur naturelle. You can browse plates from this atlas at the National Library of Medicine’s online exhibit of historical anatomies here.When I was a young lass, my brother taught me this one neat trick: if someone – say your kid brother – is about to punch you in the stomach, and for some reason you can’t block him, you can tense up all of your abdominal muscles to protect yourself. He and I diligently (and noisily) practiced this skill on one another, generally until some adult would separate us, or threaten a month of nothing but mushroom ice cream for dessert.
How old were we? Seven and nine? Eight and ten? Whatever the age, I’m sure I already knew how to protect my vital organs by tensing my muscles. It’s instinctual. Just as the rib cage protects the heart and lungs, the abdominal wall musculature can protect the organs in our abdominal cavity.
