4 PREFACE. 



activities, through which the tissues serve the whole organism of 

 which they are constituent parts. 



Assuming that histology should invariably be taught largely by 

 practical work and experience in the laboratory, and recognizing 

 the fact that it must have a place in the beginning of a medical 

 curriculum when the student's technical facility is least developed, 

 the writer believes that the best way to teach the subject is by 

 means of demonstrations at which the students have ample oppor- 

 tunities to become familiar with the structural details of the best 

 attainable specimens so prepared as to reveal the presence and 

 arrangement of the tissue-elements. In addition to such a course 

 of demonstrations he should receive practical instruction in histo- 

 logical technique, during which he may become versed in the 

 methods employed in the preparation of the specimens he uses in 

 the demonstration course. This work may be so arranged as to 

 permit his preparing a collection of specimens for himself. 



With such related courses of instruction in mind, the writer has 

 added a section on Histological Technique to the present volume. 

 In this part of the book he has endeavored to make clear those 

 various methods of preparing tissues for microscopical study which 

 he has found to yield excellent results, not only in his own hands, 

 but also when employed by those who have had no previous experi- 

 ence in such work. The more complicated methods, requiring such 

 experience, have been omitted. 



The student occasionally desires to consult the original sources of 

 information which has been published. To encourage this prac- 

 tice, the author refers him to The Journal of the Royal Microscopical 

 Society, Arc/iiv fur mikroskopische Anatomie, the Zeitschrift fur uris- 

 senschaftlichi Mikroskopie, Merkel and Bonnet's Ergsbuisse der Anat- 

 omie und Enturicklungsgeschichte, and Anatomische TIefte, in which 

 abstracts of the current literature will be found. Admirable text- 

 books upon technique are Lee's Microtomists } Vade Mecum, of which 

 a more recent revised edition is Lee and Mayer's Grundzuge der 

 mikroskopisehen Technik, and Mai lory and Wright's Pathological 

 hnique. 



E. K. D. 

 - Twenty-sixth St., 

 New York, May, 1<i00. 



