314 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 12. 



one knows the skeleton and the muscles 

 clothing it, he finds in his study of the ar- 

 teries much that he cannot fully comprehend 

 fit'om lack of acquaintance with the viscera. 

 But no method can be absolutely perfect : 

 one needs to know all of his anatomy — the 

 whole of everything — iu order to under- 

 stand any one organ perfectly. The prob.- 

 lem, therefore, for us, as teachers, is to dis- 

 cover that plan which reduces to the mini- 

 mum this necessity of knowing a good deal 

 of every department of our great science be- 

 fore entering upon the study of any one of 

 them ; and particularly the scheme which 

 makes this need least conspicuous in the 

 earlier portion of the course, when every- 

 thing is new ; for, since the growth of one's 

 anatomical knowledge makes further acqui- 

 sition in the same line progressively easier 

 day by day, because he is all the time getting 

 nearer to the goal of knowledge of the 

 whole, the last part of the course is natu- 

 rally that in which there is the least occa- 

 sion for such help as can be derived from a 

 wise order of topics. After all, however, 

 the arrangement in question is useful, per- 

 haps as good as any other, provided that 

 there is an observance of the condition 

 which I have attached to my commenda- 

 tion of it ; but without this provision it 

 seems to me to be clumsy, obstructive, 

 wasteful and irrational. 



The condition is that the student is at- 

 tempting nothing else than anatomy. Prac- 

 tically this is a state of affairs which never 

 obtains in the schools, and is not in the 

 least likely to occur ; always physiology is 

 studied synchronously, and usually, also, 

 general chemistry — the latter a branch with 

 no more claim to be regarded as a legitimate 

 topic of medical study than have botany 

 and zoology, and, in all fairness to student, 

 school and community, should be required 

 as a preliminary to the medical course. We 

 may confidently count upon finding the 

 first-year student occupied equally with 



physiology and anatomy. Now, it is so ob- 

 vious as to require no argument that the 

 action of an organ can never be studied with" 

 complete satisfaction until its structure is 

 well understood. Consequently, the anat- 

 omy of each part should be learned before 

 its function is presented, in order that the 

 pupil may work intelligently and be spared 

 much difficult and unproductive effort. If 

 the professor of anatomy does not aid him 

 in this matter, the physiologist is driven to 

 perform the task, although it is outside of 

 the proper sphere of his work, and involves 

 the expenditure of much time which he 

 needs for affairs in his own peculiar field. 

 The phj'siology which we most require is a 

 knowledge of the offices of the viscera, and 

 the teachers of this branch necessarily de- 

 vote the greater part of their instruction to 

 the consideration of the action of these or- 

 gans, which, according to the conventional 

 order of topics in the anatomical course, are 

 not touched until all other portions of sys- 

 tematic anatomy have been disposed of. 

 As a result of this, in the early part of the 

 course the anatomist is teaching a vast 

 number of things which are of the smallest 

 possible help to the student of physiology ; 

 and, in almost the last part, he goes over 

 ground which has been traversed long be- 

 fore by a suffering colleague, who has been 

 forced into this unwilling usurpation by the 

 unhappy arrangement of the anatomical 

 schedule. In other words, a large and im- 

 portant (to my tliinking, the most impor- 

 tant) section of anatomy is not taught by 

 the professor of this branch at a period 

 when it is most urgent^ required by the 

 student, and is presented by him long after 

 it has been already learned. 



Surely this state of affairs is, to say the 

 best of it, deplorable, and should not be per- 

 mitted to continue, if it can be abolished 

 ^yithout injustice to the interests of the 

 science to which we dedicate so much of 

 our lives. Each one of us should bear con- 



