emotional and heart-warming experience—even to "a lion's heart"—and so- times even brings tears to my eyes. As I wrote recently in a letter published in the Bulletin of the American C- lege of Surgeons (BACS 2006;91[8]:48): I believe it's time the pendulum shifted back to teaching our students the f- damentals of gross human anatomy and instilling a solid foundation on which to build. After all, surgeons can and will make many unnecessary and fatal accidents if they don't know surgical anatomy. The reader will notice that in this edition my son, Lee, has taken the helm as the senior author, since I am now passing through the springtime of my senility. I am proud and grateful that he is continuing this work. JES Acknowledgments From the initial publication of this book in 1995 through the present edition, we have bene ted from the support and expertise of several of Springer's medical editors. The rst edition came to fruition thanks to Esther Gumpert's enthusi- tic assistance; the second edition was bolstered by the professionalism of Beth Campbell; and the current edition is the product of Paula Callaghan's skilled guidance. We would like, also, to express our gratitude to the members of the production department at Springer for their dedicated assistance in the publi- ing process.