SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OP ABERDEEN. 169 



class, the actual details are, perhaps, driven more firmly home than if 

 it had been drawn more perfectly in the first instance. Drawing from 

 the dissected body is, I am sure, one of the best ways of honestly 

 learning topographical anatomy, but I do not intend to waste time by 

 discussing it now, because I have convinced myself, as others have 

 clone before, that very few students can be persuaded to take the 

 trouble to do it ; they will copy their teacher's drawings line by line, 

 but they will not draw from Nature. 



And now for the technique of the anatomy examination. Most 

 of the Universities give one or two papers, a viva wee of any length 

 the examiner likes, and the practical test of making a dissection. 

 For the membership of the English College of Surgeons, there is only 

 one paper, a viva voce lasting fifteen minutes, and no dissection. My 

 own experience, as far as it goes, makes me place most reliance on the 

 oral, and least on the dissection, which depends largely on the condi- 

 tion of the " part," and is so notoriously hard to mark fairly, that at 

 one examination I know only a small margin above or below the pass 

 mark is given. Considering the difficulty there is in procuring sub- 

 jects in many places, I gravely doubt whether we are justified in 

 using them in this way. 



The paper is almost always the part of the examination in which 

 candidates do worst, unless they have been specially taught to set 

 down their thoughts on paper. All coaches set papers and correct 

 them with their students, and in this way one or more questions at 

 the examination are sometimes happily spotted. It should not, how- 

 ever, be forgotten that, while the object of the coach is to get his 

 students through their examination, that of the teacher of anatomy 

 is to give as much of a real education in that subject as time will per- 

 mit, and it is rather unfair to expect him to do the work which should 

 have been done long ago at school, and teach his students not only 

 anatomy, but the art of setting out their ideas in due order on paper. 

 If it is his duty, I often think that a useful lesson might be gained 

 from the education of military cadets, who are repeatedly sent out to 



survey and furnish a report on some piece of country hitherto un- 



22 



