ABSTRACT
While an interest in human structure and composition can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, a fractional approach to mass fractionation into different components was pioneered by Jindrich Matiegka, based on anatomical dissection (Matiegka, 1921) and is still used today. In this landmark study, total mass was subdivided into bone, muscle, subcutaneous adipose tissue+skin and residual mass comprising the organs and viscera. Extensive anthropometry was performed on a limited number of subjects, using cadaver dissection as the reference method. Equations were constructed to enable bone mass to be predicted from skeletal breadths, muscle mass from corrected girths, and subcutaneous adipose tissue (plus skin) mass from skinfolds. Residual mass was obtained by subtracting these components from total mass. This methodology was applied to the Brussels cadaver study of the 1980s, and Matiegka’s original equations tested and others derived for 18 cadavers (Drinkwater et al., 1986). These studies are among a very few to relate anthropometry to dissection anatomy, which is the absolute against which other body composition methods are judged.
