1828.] to the Students of Anatomy. 469 



which the interests of art are more benefittecl than those of the parties, 

 whose lives, in case they prove successful, they are enabled, for a few 

 months or years of misery, to prolong. But even these are the reasonings 

 of the safe and healthy. Few persons are of the same opinion when the 

 hour of trial comes : and, besides, it is not upon a few extreme instances 

 that the value of a science, by which life in the main is not only mate- 

 rially prolonged, but an enormous mass of human suffering saved and 

 alleviated, ought to be tried. Then, if the skill of the surgeon be, as 

 all agree it is, of this high value this immeasurable importance to 

 society, it is to be recollected that an accurate an intimate a familiar 

 knowledge of ANATOMY, is the great basis the only one upon which 

 that skill and knowledge can be erected. No study, no talent, no 

 labour can supply to a surgeon the place of an exact and ready know- 

 ledge of anatomy. What man can take even the most ordinary machine 

 to pieces clean or repair it of which he has not examined the con- 

 struction ? Who is there, not acquainted with their structure and divi- 

 sion, that can set right a fault in a chronometer, a piano-forte, or a steam 

 engine? No explanations, no verbal instructions, no illustration by 

 plans or drawings, can give us, competently and effectually-,, this descrip- 

 tion of knowledge. We must see and study the fabric divided and in 

 parts we must examine its composition, its combination, its order and 

 arrangement, before we can take it to pieces without mischief, or, being in 

 pieces, again put it together. But if this be true, in its most extended 

 sense, of those machines which are the invention of human power or 

 genius, in how much stronger a degree does it apply to the human 

 frame, compared with which the most intricate of mortal combinations 

 are simple even to pitiableriess ? It would seem idiocy almost to sup- 

 pose that the power of dealing at all with such a miraculous engine, can 

 be obtained by any other course than that of operation and experience ; 

 repeated until the hand works of itself, almost without direction from 

 the judgment ; and we believe the most determined opponent of dissec- 

 tion cannot hesitate to admit that there are only two possible courses 

 by which this skill and knowledge can be attained by experiment upon 

 the dead or by practice upon the living.* 



Then if we are to choose between these two courses and we think 

 we may defy human ingenuity to point out a third it would seem 

 almost impossible for reasonable people to hesitate. And, so far from 

 throwing any obstacle in the way of the most full and ready access to 

 the first, we ought rather to use every precaution, that students should 

 have no inducement to resort to that which under every arrangement 

 must always be the most tempting, because the easiest and the most 

 profitable course the second. When we recollect how very slight and 

 uncertain is the check which even a well informed man can apply to the 

 skill or competence of his medical attendant. That we deal with such 

 an individual almost invariably upon a question of which we ourselves are 

 totally ignorant so ignorant, that we feel the futility of at all question- 

 ing the advantage of that which he recommends, and admit, that our 

 best hope is in resigning ourselves implicitly to his guidance. When 



* It seems waste of time to press a point which (to all people who will open their eyes) . 

 must be perfectly self evident ; but we should desire to ask those persons who think a dis- 

 cussion of this subject unnecessary how a medical student is to cut off his first leg ? No 

 bigotry, we apprehend, would be so wild as to say that his first attempt at amputation 

 should be upon a living subject ? And, if he is denied access to the dead one, he is left in 

 the situation of never being to perform a first operation at all. 



