“Scoops, buckets” in Latin. In ancient times water wheels with a series of buckets along the rim drew up water from shallow wells and poured it into troughs for watering stock or irrigation ditches. As imaginative as ever, anatomists thought that the pouches (haustra) along the large bowel or colon functioned to scoop and draw feces along the bowel, thereby resembling the haustrum of ancient times.
Anatomy word of the month: haustra
Feb 3, 2014 | Updated May 6, 2015
