INTRODUCTION 23 



be made with sureness and steadiness and without anxiety. The 

 student should keep his finger- joints nimble, and should practise 

 to acquire increased mobility of these joints. The skill gained 

 in the use of instruments in the dissecting-room may be of great 

 value in subsequent surgical practice. 



The importance of having several belly-bladed knives and 

 several knives with straight edges has been referred to above. 

 No good dissector cares to use the same knife for working out 

 skin, vessels, muscles, nerves, etc. There should be a " division 

 of labor" among scalpels. Hard, firm, tough tissues should be 

 cut through only with the cartilage-knife or with a duller scalpel. 



Forceps. These should be held in the left hand, " like a 

 pen," between the thumb and first two fingers, the ring-finger 

 and little finger being reserved for the support of the hand and 

 never permitted to touch the instrument. The forceps should 

 never be held * ' in the fist. ' ' They should be grasped about the 

 middle, not too high up, and the fingers should not be cramped, 

 otherwise the hand tires too quickly. The support of the hand 

 on its ulnar margin by means of the little finger and the ring- 

 finger is important, as it helps to make the work more exact and 

 more certain. 



Scissors. These should be grasped by the thumb and middle 

 finger. The scissors are generally used where the parts to be 

 cut through are soft, yielding, and easily displaceable and do 

 not offer much resistance to the edge of the knife. Scissors are 

 much employed by many dissectors in the study of the viscera 

 and of the blood-vessels. They are especially valuable in fol- 

 lowing out through loose connective tissue or fat the finer 

 branches of arteries and veins, which might be more easily cut 

 if the knife were used. Like the straight-edged scalpel with a 

 sharp point, scissors are useful in cutting in angles or corners 

 and in deep places. Fat held in the forceps can be most easily 

 removed with scissors. Very fine scissors are useful in the dis- 

 section of delicate nerves and of the small muscles of the face 

 and orbit, but in general scissors are little suited to the dissec- 

 tion of muscles and nerves. 



Probe. The flimsy probes usually supplied in dissecting sets 

 are of but little use and should be discarded. The firm probe 

 devised for use in Baltimore by Professor Mall is the best one 

 available. Many students do a very large part of their dissec- 

 tion with this probe. It is especially useful for the beginner, 

 who is afraid of destroying important structures with the knife. 

 The " blunt dissection" which the probe permits of insures the 



