ON THE PKOGEESS OF ANATOMY. 365 



no vivifying principle. It cannot be productive. It never 

 can be effectually employed in advancing the boundaries of 

 the science, in applying it legitimately to medicine, or in 

 elucidating its true principles to those who are learning. 

 Here, gentlemen, lie the difficulties you will meet with in 

 your anatomical studies. It is my duty to guide you past 

 them, and to assist you in acquiring such a general, accurate, 

 and well-balanced knowledge of the subject as shall fit you 

 for the important duties you are afterwards to undertake. To 

 see how this is to be done, let us examine briefly the direction 

 our science has taken during the last ten or fifteen years. 



The beautiful observations of Harvey and Malpighi on 

 the formation of the chick in ovo, and the remarkable micro- 

 scopic researches of Hooke and Leeuwenhoeck on the intimate 

 structure of the textures and minute parts of plants and ani- 

 mals, much as they excited attention at the time, were almost 

 forgotten, and the subject laid aside, principally on account of 

 the imperfect glasses of the period. It was one of those 

 attempts to advance a science in a direction for which it was 

 not fully prepared, and belongs to a class of events which may 

 be traced as well in the general history of nations as in the 

 progress of the various departments of human knowledge. 

 The more precise application by Mr. Lister of the different 

 refracting powers of crown and flint glass, to correct the 

 chromatic aberration of the compound microscope, again 

 enabled anatomists to employ the instrument. About this 

 time Von Baer and Purkinje, two German anatomists, began 

 to use the microscope extensively — the former on the then 

 neglected researches of Harvey and Malpighi, the latter on 

 those of Hooke and Leeuwenhoeck. 



Von Baer, followed by Rathke, Huschke, and a number of 

 other German anatomists, speedily amassed a series of facts 

 and principles, which now form an extensive department of 

 our science — "the Anatomy of the gradual formation of the 



