THE RELATIONS OF ANATOMY TO OTHER SCIENCES 



BY WILHELM WALDEYER 

 (Translated from the German by Dr. Thomas Stotesbury Githens, Philadelphia) 



[Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried Waldeyer.Professor of Anatomy, University of Berlin, 

 since 1883. b. Hehlen, Brunswick, Germany, October 6, 1836. M.D., Ph.D., 

 LL.D. Assistant at the Physiological Laboratories of Konigsberg and Breslau, 

 and Professor of Pathological Anatomy, University of Breslau, 1865-72; Pro- 

 fessor of Human Normal Anatomy, University of Strassburg, 1872-83. Per- 

 manent Secretary of Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences; also member of 

 fifty-seven academies and learned societies. Author of Ovary and Egg; The Sex 

 Cells; Topographical Anatomy of the Pelvic Organs; and numerous other noted 

 works and articles on anatomy.] 



WHEN I attempt to treat correctly, according to the general pro- 

 gramme, that branch of science which concerns itself with the study 

 of the structure of our own bodies, let me first recall that here we must 

 create something for life out of death. Even the most long-lived man 

 passes over the stage of the world like a shadow-picture. He passes 

 quickly away after a short instant of existence, "a walking shadow 

 signifying nothing." 



But if the life of the individual signifies nothing, the stream of 

 living individuals which constantly flows over our planet shows in 

 man the greatest, the most important, the most powerful being which 

 the world has brought forth, and I place against the words of the great 

 Briton, those of the great Grecian, 



IIoAAa ra Sctva /c'cruSev di/$pu>7roi Seivdrepov TreAei. 



Thus we see that man does not hesitate, in his search for true know- 

 ledge of how life springs from death, to lay the hand of investigation 

 even on his dead, in order to learn from them what he is. It has, 

 indeed, cost him centuries of severe struggle, of the building-up of 

 culture, before he attained this. Man has killed his kind without 

 scruple in thousands, in millions, in billions; yes, has boasted of it, 

 and has praised the act in songs and poems, and does still to this 

 day; but before the blank, senseless corpse, the memento mori, he 

 felt ashamed. The mutilation of corpses, w 7 hen it has occurred, 

 has always been severely judged. Even the fame of Achilles has 

 not been increased by the fact that he dragged the corpse of Hector 

 around the holy city. In earlier times the opening of bodies was 

 looked upon as a desecration. This is why human anatomy, al- 

 though placed among the most ancient studies, was first raised to 

 the rank of a science when investigation of human bodies could be 

 undertaken in increasing number, owing to the powerful efforts of 

 educated men with a determined aim. 



