l.S 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 523. 



pressed upon his mind, and when he has 

 occasion later to deal with these same parts, 

 he has the advantage of finding himself in 

 the presence of familiar structures. How 

 far in this first experience the special 

 gi'oups of facts which are sometimes set 

 apart under the head of surgical anatomy 

 should be introduced, is a more or less 

 open question. The present weight of 

 opinion demands that they should still be 

 kept by themselves. Nevertheless, while 

 the anatomical experience of the average 

 medical student should rest on a broad 

 scientific background, he should at the 

 same time have a distinct appreciation of 

 the eminently practical value of the in- 

 formation he is expected to acquire. 



The question at once arises how the 

 monotony of long-continued dissection can 

 be relieved, and the student maintained in 

 a condition of sufficient receptivity to make 

 the work really worth while ; for the acqui- 

 sition of vocabularies has never been count- 

 ed as one of the greater pleas\;res of life. 

 There are several legitimate devices. In 

 llie first place, if it is possible for the stu- 

 dent to have near at hand a microscope 

 ^vllich may now and then be used for the 

 «'.\iimination of the different tissues as they 

 appear in the cadaver. This cross refer- 

 ence between the gross and microscopic 

 appearance will serve to bring into clo.se 

 connection with one another two classes of 

 facts which are often separated to their 

 disadvantage, and to revive the histological 

 pictures which .should be incorporated in 

 ■gross structures, but which in most cases 

 remain forever apart from them. On the 

 other hand, a search for anomalies or varia- 

 tions serves to give both a reality and 

 purposefulness to the work and to make a 

 student feel that in return for the large 

 amount of time necessarily required for 

 liis anatomical training, he is, in some small 

 measure at least, contributing to the sci- 

 ence. It is unavoidable, this expenditure 



of time, and absolutely necessary, that the 

 student should do these things with his 

 own hands in order to obtain the three- 

 dimensional impression of the structure 

 with which he deals. 



In this connection just a word as to the 

 way in which the beginner may be aided 

 in the comprehension of his work. The 

 excellent diagrams and pictures which are 

 now used to illu.strate the best anatomical 

 text-books carry us as far as that 'means 

 of assistance can probably go. Pedagog- 

 ical experience points strongly, how'ever, to 

 the superior value of the three-dimensional 

 model, and although such models are more 

 difficult to collect, harder to care for, and 

 require more space and caution in their 

 use, they are so far superior to any other 

 device, except an illustrative dissection it- 

 self, that the collection of them in connec- 

 tion with anatomical work becomes a moral 

 obligation. 



If we turn now to the wider uses which 

 may be made of anatomical material as it 

 usiially appears in the dissecting room, we 

 find that a number of directors of labora- 

 tories have been utilizing this material for 

 the accumulation of data in such a form 

 that it may be later treated by statistical 

 methods. Thus they have weighed and 

 measured in different ways various parts 

 of the cadaver, and in some cases de- 

 termined the correlations between the or- 

 gans or parts examined. It can not be 

 too strongly emphasized that the results 

 thus obtained are to be used only with the 

 full appreciation of the fact that the ma- 

 terial ordinarily available for examination 

 in the dissecting room belongs in all coun- 

 tries to a social group which contains the 

 highest percentage of poorly developed and 

 atypical individuals. The conclusions, 

 therefore, that can be drawn from the in- 

 vestigations of this material must always 

 be weighted by its peculiar nature. To 

 illustrate what is here meant by the pe- 



