350 ON THE PEOGRESS OF ANATOMY. 



V.— ON THE PEOGRESS OF ANATOMY* 



Although this is not the first occasion on which I have had 

 to commence an Anatomical Course in this Theatre, it is the 

 first on which I have been called on to do so in the winter 

 session as Professor of Anatomy. I will therefore direct your 

 attention very shortly to the peculiar circumstances in which 

 we are placed at this time, when the science is making rapid 

 progress, and when much is expected both of you and of me. 

 I do not know how I can do this better than by taking a brief 

 retrospect of the progress of anatomy during the one hundred 

 and twenty years it has been taught in this University. Short, 

 comparatively, as the period is which I intend to review, it 

 would far exceed the limits of an introductory discourse to 

 enter into details. I shall attain my object much better by 

 pointing out to you the influences which have affected the 

 progress of our science, the various aspects which it has pre- 

 sented at different periods, and the comparatively small number 

 of men, who, among the multitude of labourers in the same 

 field, must be considered as the types of the particular epoch 

 in which one or more of them appeared. 



When we consider the progress which society in general, 

 or any of the arts or sciences have made, we at once perceive 

 that that progress has not been steady and invariable, but by 

 fits and starts, presenting periods of action and of reaction, 



* This lecture, introductory to the author's first Systematic Course of 

 Lectures on Anatomy, was delivered at the commencement of the winter 

 session 1846. It has not previously been published. — Eds. 



