VI PREFATORY REMARKS. 



least useful, the least dignified. I have, after much consi- 

 deration, determined to adopt the form of question and 

 answer. I found this very useful and agreeable to me 

 when a student; my private pupils have been happily 

 aided by it; it certainly greatly facilitates the private in- 

 struction of pupils. This last reason, of the truth of which 

 there can be no doubt, would have been sufficient to decide 

 me. It appears to me also, that in submitting the question 

 and giving the answer, the mind undergoes a double ope- 

 ration, favourably concentrates the student's attention, and 

 leads to a correct intellectual result. I therefore readily 

 submit it to the student of this work to decide, after he 

 has completed the perusal of it, whether or not I have 

 erred in adopting the catechetical method. If this method 

 be generally unsystematic, it is replied that I give the 

 system of Bichat, and that is my object. If, as was sug- 

 gested by a medical friend, in pursuing the course most 

 useful to students I have sacrificed the dignity of author- 

 ship, the latter is most freely surrendered in order to ensure 

 the former. 



On another account it is thought this work may be well 

 received. Modern publications are interposed between 

 the medical student and Bichat; and on this ground, that 

 they omit his errors, embrace his truths, and introduce 

 subsequent improvements. There is some foundation for 

 this; but as to the supposed erroneous views of Bichat, 

 may not "the stone which the builders rejected" be yet 

 found the sure one for the building? And those views 

 which are esteemed improved ones, have many of them 

 yet to bear the sternness of critical and experimental in- 

 vestigation. It is scarcely to be expected that a student 

 will, after reading the summaries of Horner, and of Bayle 

 and Hollard on general anatomy, patiently explore the 



