[Surgery without anatomy?]

Anatomy is the basis of all operative medicine. While this branch of scientific medicine is frequently not explicitly mentioned in surgical publications, it is nonetheless quintessential to medical education. In the era of video sequences and digitized images, surgical methods are frequently communicated in the form of cinematic documentation of surgical procedures; however, this occurs without the help of explanatory drawings or subtexts that would illustrate the underlying anatomical nomenclature, comment on fine functionally important details or even without making any mention of the surgeon. In scientific manuscripts color illustrations frequently appear in such overwhelming quantities that they resemble long arrays of trophies but fail to give detailed explanations that would aid the therapeutic translation of the novel datasets. In a similar fashion, many anatomy textbooks prefer to place emphasis on illustrations and photographs while supplying only a paucity of explanations that would foster the understanding of functional contexts and thus confuse students and practitioners alike. There is great temptation to repeat existing data and facts over and over again, while it is proportionally rare to make reference to truly original scientific discoveries. A number of examples are given in this article to illustrate how discoveries that were made even a long time ago can still contribute to scientific progress in current times. This includes the NO signaling molecules, which were first described in 1775 but were only discovered to have a pivotal role as neurotransmitters in the function of human paradoxical sphincter muscles in 2012 and 2015. Readers of scientific manuscripts often long for explanations by the numerous silent coauthors of a publication who could contribute to the main topic by adding in-depth illustrations (e. g. malignograms, evolution and involution of lymph node structures).