390 HUMAN ANATOMY 



the other, and there is, moreover, much to be said for such an arrange- 

 ment as will bring the average student into a laboratory where he 

 can himself see how research work is conducted. Yet it would be 

 possible to name institutions in which the relative amount of time 

 required for teaching as compared with that left free for investiga- 

 tion might with advantage be readjusted, and almost all of our 

 educational institutions at the same time admittedly lack the funds 

 and often the educational purpose, which would justify them in 

 attempting to meet the various difficulties connected with ana- 

 tomical investigations on a large scale. Yet no one questions the 

 importance of striving for a more rapid advance. A response to 

 this feeling finds its expression in the several research funds which 

 are now available in this country and abroad for the endowment 

 of investigation, and in the plan presented to the International 

 Association of Academies, and, it should be added, largely due to 

 the initiative of Professor Waldeyer, for the establishment in vari- 

 ous countries of special institutes for the furtherance of research in 

 embryology and neurology. 



These two subjects were first selected owing to the peculiar dif- 

 ficulties of obtaining the needed material, and the great labor 

 necessary to prepare the complete series of sections which are 

 required in many cases. These conditions make it imperative that, 

 if we would avoid large loss of labor and much vexation of spirit, 

 the work in these lines should be coordinated, standards adopted, 

 and the material of the laboratory, like the books of a library or 

 the specimens in a museum, be available for the use of other in- 

 vestigators. Nothing, I believe, is further from the minds of those 

 engaged in this plan than an attempt to produce anatomical re- 

 sults on a manufacturing scale. But the questions calling for solu- 

 tion in the fields here designated are so numerous that such an 

 arrangement will merely mean a subdivision of labor in which each 

 institute will take one of the larger problems and direct its main 

 energies to the study of this, so conducting the work that it shall 

 be correlated with that in progress elsewhere. The director of such 

 an institute will be justified in extending his work through assist- 

 ants just as far as he can carry the details of the different re- 

 searches in progress, and thus knit them into one piece for the 

 education of himself and his colleagues. When we pass beyond 

 this limit, admittedly subject to wide individual variation, there 

 is little to be gained, but the evils of excessive production, should 

 they arise, carry within themselves the means of their own correc- 

 tion. 



This step, which is assuredly about to be taken, should enable 

 us in the future to do things in anatomy not heretofore possible, 

 and when, some years hence, there is another gathering of scientific 



