AbstractIn designing the medical school curriculum something has to be taught first even though the basic sciences and clinical topics interlock. Students traditionally learn anatomy first and suspend ther bewilderment regarding the eventual application of the structural detail studied. Infinite memory chores are learned with little overall view of how the student's data bank will function in the acute clinical situation. A fundamental charge of physicians is to consider all diagnostic possibilities before implementing treatment. Yet with the current system, first year students find themselves in possession of large volumes of information but are still unable to establish even a rudimentary differential diagnosis. It is suggested that during the first year clinical anatomy course the student be introduced to broad categories of disease using anatomy as the structural foundation for visualizing diagnostic possibilities. Wasteful interludes in the laboratory could be replaced with memory‐enhancing dissection using visual, verbal, auditory, and kinesthetic methods coupled with clinically oriented vocabulary expansion. A basic etiologic mnemonic is discussed as a framework for rapid diagnosis. In conjunction with the idea of decreasing medical information overload, we suggest that data presented to medical students in general be organized in a bicameral fashion as either emergent or elective. Anatomists and clinicians should consider rewriting the anatomy manual to include “clinical patholo