PKEFACB. 



IN preparing the following pages for publication, it has been 

 my endeavour to keep the fact that I was writing for nurses, 

 constantly in mind. So far as I know, no attempt has yet 

 been made to compile a text-book on anatomy and physiology 

 for the use of nurses, although the subject is more or less 

 universally and systematically taught in our training schools. 

 During several years I have spent much time and trouble 

 in preparing notes on this subject for class-teaching, and it 

 was suggested to me that if these notes could be put into 

 shape, they might prove useful in our schools. The scheme 

 of the book has been practically worked out in class-teaching, 

 and in compiling the notes from standard works on anatomy 

 and physiology, I have sought to abstract that which shall 

 prove valuable and interesting to the nurse, while avoiding 

 those innumerable and minute details indispensable to the 

 medical student. 



On first glancing through the following pages, it may be 

 thought that the structural elements of the tissues have been 

 dwelt upon at greater length than is at all necessary, and 

 that the whole subject has been thereby made unnecessarily 

 difficult. In reply to which I can only say that after repeated 

 experiments in teaching, this method has gradually revealed 

 itself to me as the most effectual one for making the subject 

 intelligible, and I have found, after careful instruction in 

 the structure of the tissues, the student most readily under- 

 stands the functions of the different parts of the body. 



It is always well to bear in mind that the primary object of 

 educative methods is to enlarge the mental capacity of the 



o 

 vii 



