THE RELATIONS OF ANATOMY 369 



with all his mighty energy until his death, which occurred May 1 of 

 this year, praising him, and at the same time regretting that he 

 could not survive the taking-up of this task by the Academies. 



In addition to the medical sciences, which we have already 

 mentioned among the mediate influences, other natural sciences 

 have had an immediate influence upon the development of anatomy. 

 If medical sciences must be mentioned here again, this is justified 

 by the fact that surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics, and the 

 many modern specialties, have had an immediate influence upon 

 anatomy, by their careful investigations on the living and the com- 

 parison of healthy with diseased organs. They have discoTered 

 many new facts and shown others in the proper light, but this 

 need not be gone into in detail here. 



In addition to the medical branches, human anatomy must be 

 especially indebted to botany and zoology; above all, however, 

 to embryology and comparative anatomy. Botany helped espe- 

 cially in the first completion of general anatomy, above all, the 

 study of the cells and tissues, and has advanced in this direction 

 considerably farther than human and comparative anatomy. The 

 cells themselves were first discovered by botanists, but this is 

 easily understood, because the botanical objects are generally much 

 easier to prepare, and especially to examine in the fresh state, than 

 those of zoology and human anatomy. 



Besides these, physics in all its branches, chemistry, and mathe- 

 matics, have given much aid to the anatomists and will continue 

 to do so. 



It is, in the first instance, the estimation of mass, number, and 

 weight whose improvement and refinement have always exercised 

 a beneficial influence on anatomy. I shall mention here only the 

 balances, the pelvimeter, the measuring-scale, the measuring-cylin- 

 der, the micrometer, the kinds of delicate counting-apparatus, the 

 manometer and thermometer, and the apparatus for the deter- 

 mination of capillarity. We may also mention here the principal 

 mechanical instruments of anatomists, knives, scissors, sounds, 

 tubes, and syringes. 



Especially interesting is the history of the microtome, which was 

 first made use of by the before-mentioned anatomist of Leipzig, 

 William His. In this case mechanics received a great furthering 

 from anatomy, before which the problem of making an uninter- 

 rupted series of extremely thin sections of the most various objects 

 was placed. 



We could hardly believe, unless we were familiar with the subject, 

 what difficulties were here to be overcome, and how much genius 

 was required in the performance of this task, and we are still work- 

 ing at the problem. 



