ON THE PROGRESS OF ANATOMY. 359 



imbued with the spirit of these works, you cannot fully un- 

 derstand the bearings of human anatomy on the higher de- 

 partments of medicine. Beclard, a pupil and enthusiastic 

 admirer of his great master Bichat, produced an excellent 

 work on general anatomy in the same spirit, of which there is 

 an English translation by Dr. Knox. J. F. Meckel produced 

 in Germany, where this department of the science had been 

 already in advance, his General and Morbid Anatomy, which is 

 also translated into our language. It is to general anatomy 

 that we owe the present improved state of pathological 

 medicine, and these two subjects must ever advance hand in 

 hand, and should any of you be inclined to give ear to the 

 statement so often made, that anatomy is necessary to the 

 surgeon, but not to the physician, recollect that the illustrious 

 founder of that general anatomy to which we owe the present 

 advance in physic, was a profound descriptive anatomist, and 

 wrote one of the most complete and elegant systems we 

 possess on the subject. 



Surgical anatomy may be defined to be the dissection and 

 description of the regions of the human body in which sur- 

 gical operations may be performed, or injuries and surgical 

 diseases may occur, in such a manner as to become acquainted 

 with the exact relative positions of all the parts, — skin, fat, 

 muscles, nerves, and vessels, — with a view to diagnosis and 

 operation. Like general anatomy its promotion may be traced 

 in the works of various authors, previous to the present 

 century ; but it is only during this century that it has become 

 a subject of systematic study. It first assumed this form in 

 the celebrntid work of the late Mr. Allan Burns, On flic 

 Surgical Anatomy of the Head and Neck, and we can only 

 regret that the premature death of this excellent lecturer, 

 surgeon, and anatomist, brought on by his devotion to science, 

 should have deprived us of the remainder of ;i work which, as 

 far as it goes, has not even been approached by any of his 



