[Verse 1]
Three highways run beneath the skin before you're born,
Celiac trunk feeds the foregut — stomach, liver, corn
Of the pancreas, spleen and duodenum's upper half,
SMA claims midgut territory, that's the craft —
Jejunum, ileum, cecum, transverse colon too,
IMA serves the hindgut, left colon coming through,
Sigmoid, rectum, upper anal canal in line,
Three vessels map the embryo like longitude and spine
[Chorus]
Vorderdarm, Mitteldarm, Hinterdarm — drei Gefäße, drei Bezirke,
Celiac, SMA, IMA — memorise the architecture,
L'intestino ruota, si fissa, poi è pronto,
Foregut, midgut, hindgut — never get this wrong though
[Verse 2]
Week six the midgut herniates into the cord,
Physiological herniation — don't be floored,
It rotates counter-clockwise, two-seventy degrees,
Around the SMA axis — embryology's trapeze,
Returns by week ten, the cecum drops down right,
Ladd's bands form when malrotation ruins the flight —
Peritoneal bands strangle the duodenum flat,
Volvulus of the midgut follows close on after that
[Chorus]
Vorderdarm, Mitteldarm, Hinterdarm — drei Gefäße, drei Bezirke,
Celiac, SMA, IMA — memorise the architecture,
L'intestino ruota, si fissa, poi è pronto,
Foregut, midgut, hindgut — never get this wrong though
[Verse 3]
The vitelline duct should vanish, but sometimes it stays,
Meckel's diverticulum — a remnant of those days,
Two inches long, two feet from the ileocecal valve,
Two percent of people carry it — do the math,
True diverticulum bearing all three bowel layers,
May hold ectopic gastric mucosa — bleeding's what it craves,
Rule of twos is your mnemonic, carve it in your mind,
A vestigial cartography of structures left behind
[Bridge]
Now learn a word — *anlage* — German but adopted whole,
The primordial precursor, the blueprint of a role,
Every organ starts as anlage, latent, unrevealed,
The cloaca's anlage splits — urorectal septum sealed,
Descending toward the perineum, purse-string to the floor,
Divides the cloaca into gut and urinary door,
When the septum fails to reach — anorectal malformation,
Fistulae to bladder, vagina, perineal station
[Chorus]
Vorderdarm, Mitteldarm, Hinterdarm — drei Gefäße, drei Bezirke,
Celiac, SMA, IMA — memorise the architecture,
L'intestino ruota, si fissa, poi è pronto,
Foregut, midgut, hindgut — never get this wrong though
[Outro]
The mesentery's no afterthought, no passive hanging sheet,
Toldt described a continuum — one organ, complete,
Fascia of Gerota, Toldt's fascia, all connected planes,
A single folded structure threading viscera through its veins,
So when you enter Theatre, trace the embryonic map,
Celiac, SMA, IMA — no gap,
Il mesentere è un organo — Toldt aveva ragione,
One body built from anlage — surgical precision