Sisson's Anatomy of the Horse, edited & abridged for physical therapists: Volume 2: The Pelvic Limb (Sisson's Anatomy of the Horse, edited & abridged for physical therapists (in three volumes))

Sisson’s textbooks have been an invaluable resource to students of the veterinary sciences for over a hundred years and the 1914 edition of The Anatomy of the Domestic Animals has been a favourite of mine since I began studying equine anatomy. His writing style is clear, concise and beautifully descriptive. The only downsides being the often out-dated anatomical terms and names and the inclusion of many Latin versions. These tended to break the flow of reading and comprehension for me and so I edited it for my own use - replacing the terms with those that are most commonly in use nowadays.

When I started teaching my associates, I recommended the text to them, but realised that it was still rather inaccessible. So I abridged it to remove the chapters on the other animals (dog, ox, pig) and also sectioned it into the three main regions of the horse (thoracic limb, pelvic limb and head, neck and back). It therefore became a concise, easily readable study guide.

I purposely left Sisson’s language and style mostly intact with only a very few updates. Much in the way that I find reading texts by a writer for whom English is not their first language more stimulating - their minor mistakes in grammar or pronunciation actually hold my attention more than a perfect text; the older language of Sisson also retains a stronger hold on my concentration. I hope it has a similar effect on you!

The illustrations, I have generally left alone, just with a some enhancement to make them a little clearer - obviously the reproduction of the drawings in such an old text is not perfect, but they are a basic guide.

These three volumes now form part of the required texts for my ‘Equine Anatomy for Physical Therapists, with Human Comparative Anatomy’ courses, alongside my equine anatomy atlases of the same name.

I hope you find Sisson's writings as valuable an enhancement to your studies as I did!