358 ON THE 'PROGRESS OF ANATOMY. 



century new views opened up in our science, and it began to 

 be prosecuted by different individuals, in different directions 

 and with different objects. Just as we found, in passing from 

 the first to the second epoch, that the results of the leading 

 researches of the former passed on as modified but acknow- 

 ledged principles of action into the latter, so, in passing from 

 the second to the third epoch, both descriptive anatomy and 

 physiology continued to advance. The systems of descriptive 

 anatomy published during the present century are very 

 numerous — as, for example, the works of Portal, J. F. Meckel, 

 Bichat, Cloquet, Hildebrandt, Sommering, and Blandin ; but 

 they are all modelled on that of Winslow. The engraved illus- 

 trations have also been numerous, and of these the plates of 

 Walter, Scarpa, Weber, Tiedemann, and Barclay, may especially 

 be mentioned. But the period now under review, extending 

 to within ten years of the present date, is chiefly character- 

 ised by the rise and progress of three apparently distinct 

 departments of anatomical science — general anatomy, 

 surgical anatomy, and comparative anatomy. Not that these 

 had not their respective cultivators, and made some progress, 

 in former periods of the history of our science, but it is only 

 in the nineteenth century that they have become systematised 

 and characteristic. 



General anatomy — by which term we understand the sys- 

 tematic structure, physiological properties, and pathological 

 phenomena met with in the different textures of which all 

 the organs or parts of the body are composed, each texture 

 considered by itself — may be traced as a germ in the school of 

 William Hunter, was almost expressed in the physiology of 

 Haller, gives a complexion to the morbid anatomy of Baillie, 

 and suddenly appeared in its present advanced condition 

 through the genius and works of Bichat. With the works of 

 Bichat on physiology and general anatomy you must in due 

 time make yourselves acquainted ; for until you are thoroughly 



