LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC ANECDOTES. 



ANATOMISTS MD ANATOMY, 



EXPERIMENTS ON THE LOWER 

 ANIMALS. 



Dr. George Wilson, in his Life 

 of Dr. John Reid, shows by the 

 following instance, that there are 

 occasions on which the infliction of 

 suffering on the lower animals 

 may, so far from being intention- 

 ally cruel, be the fruit of an enligh- 

 tened and profound humanity. Till 

 late in the last century, aneurism 

 in the arteries was treated by cut- 

 ting off the limb. The great phy- 

 siologist, John Hunter, was led by 

 his intimate knowledge of anatomy 

 to think it probable, that by the 

 simple device of tying a silk thread 

 round the artery in a certain part 

 of its course, he should be able to 

 cure the disease, and save both life 

 and limb. He made trial on living 

 dogs, and succeeded ; he proceeded 

 to do the same with the human 

 sufferer from aneurism, and, at the 

 expense of a small amount of pain, 

 effected a cure. No one in his 

 senses (says the writer) will say 

 that the infliction of a little tran- 

 sient pain on a dog some eighty 

 years ago, has not been amply com- 

 pensated by the untold sum of 

 human agony which it has since 

 prevented ; or deny that he who 

 tortured the living dog, did not 

 merely a lawful, but also a merito- 

 rious act. One could almost ima- 

 gine the dog proud of the ser- 



vice it had rendered to mankind. 

 The operation introduced by Hun- 

 ter is now universally practised in 

 surgery. 



PROFESSOR JUNKER. 



Many who were personally ac- 

 quainted with the celebrated 

 Junker, professor of the Univer- 

 sity of Halle, have frequently heard 

 him relate the following anecdote: 



Being professor of anatomy, he 

 once procured, for dissection, the 

 bodies of two criminals who had 

 been hanged. The key of the dis- 

 secting-room not being immediately 

 at hand, when they were brought 

 home to him, he ordered them to be 

 laid down in an apartment which 

 opened into his bed-chamber. The 

 evening came, and Junker, accord- 

 ing to custom, proceeded to resume 

 his literary labours before he re- 

 tired to rest. It was now near 

 midnight, and all his family were 

 fast asleep, when he heard a rumb- 

 ling noise in his closet. Thinking 

 that, by some mistake, the cat had 

 been shut up with the dead bodies, 

 he arose, and taking the candle, 

 went to see what had happened. 

 But what must have been his asto- 

 nishment, or rather his panic, on 

 perceiving that the sack, which 

 contained the two bodies, was rent 

 through the middle? He ap- 

 proached, and found that one of 

 them was gone ! 



