VI PREFACE. 



thing of real importance, is the best. He has not, therefore, added a great deal 

 lo the individual description of the bones, ligaments, muscles, blood-vessels, 

 and nerves. But in the department of General Anatomy, and especially in 

 Splanchnology — the viscera being so important in a medical point of view — 

 the student will find the additions to have been both numerous and extensive. 



The department of Neurology, which has been the fashionable anatomical 

 study, for years past, and upon which hangs so much that is important in 

 physiology and medicine, has appeared to him more deficient than any other 

 portion of the original work, as the brain and spinal marrow have been describ- 

 ed by Dr. VVistar, only from above downwards ; a method which was, however, 

 the most approved and general in his day. The editor has therefore added two 

 entire chapters on that subject, one on the General Anatomy of the Nervous 

 System, and one on the special description of the Spinal Rlarrow and Brain 

 from below upwards, in the order of its development and the direction of its 

 functions, retaining, nevertheless, here as in other parts, all the original text. 

 It has also been thought advisable, to transpose several portions of the work, 

 when by so doing, parts belonging to the same general tissue could be placed 

 in more natural connexion, and made to correspond with the mode in which 

 they are usually described. 



Thus, the account of the brain, the eye and the ear, has been transferred from 

 the first volume to the second, and placed in continuity with that of the other parts 

 of the general nervous system. To facilitate the student in the aquisition of 

 this difficult science, all the plates of the former edition, which were sufficiently 

 accurate to be useful, have been retained, and several other copperplate engrav- 

 ings of the blood-vessels added, with upwards of a hundred wood cuts, some 

 of which are original, but the greater part collected with considerable care and 

 labor from the newest and most approved sources. 



The amount of the new matter added to this edition is nearly equal to a 

 fourth part of the whole. The student, will, however, be enabled to distinguish 

 readily the original text of Dr. Wistar, from the additions which have been 

 made either by Dr. Horner, wtich are all included in brackets [], or from those 

 of the present editor, which are separated from the other parts of the work by 

 their commencing and terminating with a dash — . Various synonyms introduc- 

 ed throughout the work, and some more trifling emendations of the text, it has 

 not been thought necessary to designate. 



JOSEPH PANCOAST, 



Philadelphia, Bee. 1, 1838. 



