PROBLEMS IN HUMAN ANATOMY 379 



from the history of human anatomy, it was brought into the medical 

 curriculum in response to the demands both of physiology and sur- 

 gery, but gradually became most closely associated with the latter. 

 For a long time its relative significance as a medical discipline was 

 very great, because it represented the only real laboratory work 

 which appeared in the training of the medical student. Indeed, a 

 generation ago the exactness of anatomical methods was so lauded 

 in comparison with the methods then commonly used in medicine, 

 that anatomists came to scoff at the vagueness of their colleagues, 

 while to-day, if we may be persuaded by some of our physiological 

 friends, they have remained only to prey on the time of students 

 who might be better employed. Although such a thrust may be 

 readily parried, it is, nevertheless, necessary to admit that times 

 are changed, and that as a laboratory exercise human anatomy is 

 to-day outranked by several of the subjects in which the laboratory 

 work permits a more precise formulation of problems and their more 

 rapid and definite solution. However, it still retains, rightly enough, 

 much of its former eminence. 



Among the problems in human anatomy, there is, perhaps, none 

 more important than the way in which it is to be presented to the 

 five young gentlemen ranged around a subject in the somewhat 

 trying atmosphere of the dissecting-room. Just what they may be 

 expected to learn from such an experience would require some time 

 to state. Certain it is that these beginning anatomists are almost 

 all of them intending to become physicians, and some of them to 

 become surgeons, and to this end they are building up a picture 

 of the human body which will be useful to them in their profession. 

 They are doing this by the aid of the best pedagogical means at their 

 command, namely, the reinforcement of the ocular impressions 

 by the contact and muscular sensations that come from the actual 

 performance of the dissection itself. If previously they have had 

 some experience in the dissection of the lower mammals, they will 

 note at once the differences shown in the case of man, and if their 

 embryology is at their command, it will be easy for them on sug- 

 gestion or on their own initiative to appreciate how some of the 

 peculiar relations between parts of the human body have been 

 developed. Beyond this the information obtained is of the same 

 order as that of the vocabulary of a language. The student gets 

 a certain number of discrete pictures of the different parts of the 

 body more or less clearly impressed upon his mind, and when he 

 has occasion later to deal with these same parts, he has the advan- 

 tage of finding himself in the presence of familiar structures. How 

 far in this first experience the special groups of facts which are some- 

 times set apart under the head of surgical anatomy should be intro- 

 duced, is a more or less open question. The present weight of opinion 



