JANUARY 6, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



17 



powers of the microscope for their solution. 

 But even within such wide limits the ma- 

 terial that ordinarily comes to hand leaves 

 much to be desired, and in elucidating this 

 or that feature in the structures under ex- 

 amination, it is often found necessary to 

 modify the physiological conditions under 

 which these structures have been working, 

 in the hopes that^their appearance may be 

 altered thereby, and so be more readily 

 understood. 



Taken in a broad way, this is the reason 

 why the data of pathology and experi- 

 mental morphology are so important for 

 the development of anatomical thought, 

 helping as they do in the solution of the 

 problems connected with the finer struc- 

 ture of the animal body, just as Embryol- 

 ogy and teratology illuminate the gross 

 morphological relations in the adult. 



I am quite aware that in making the 

 foregoing statements I have suggested more 

 modes of investigation than are at present 

 used in connection with man. But the 

 anatomy of the human body in adult life 

 forms in itself so limited a field that no 

 investigator can possibly confine himself 

 to this portion alone, and there is every 

 reason for here treating the subject in the 

 larger way. As we see from the history 

 of human anatomy, it was brought into 

 the medical curriculum in response to the 

 demands both of physiology and surgery, 

 but gradually became most closely associ- 

 ated with the latter. For a long time its 

 relative significance as a medical discipline 

 was very great, because it represented the 

 only real laboratory work which appeared 

 in the training of the medical student. 

 Indeed, a generation ago the exactness of 

 anatomical methods was so lauded in com- 

 parison with the methods then commonly 

 used in medicine, that anatomists came to 

 scoi¥ at the vagueness of their colleagues, 

 while to-day, if we may be persuaded by 

 some of our physiological friends, they 



have remained only to prey on the time 

 of students who might be better employed. 

 Although such a thrust may be readily 

 parried, it is, nevertheless, necessary to 

 admit that times are changed, and that as 

 a laboratory exercise human anatomy is to- 

 day outranked by several of the subjects 

 in which the laboratory work permits a 

 more precise fornuilation of problems and 

 their more rapid and definite solution. 

 However, it still retains, rightly enough, 

 much of its former eminence. 



Among the problems in Inaman anatomy, 

 there is, perhaps, none more important 

 than the way in which it is to be presented 

 to the five young gentlemen ranged around 

 a subject in the somewhat trying atmos- 

 phere of the dissecting room. Just what 

 they may be expected to learn from such 

 an experience would require some time to 

 state. Certain it is that these beginning 

 anatomists are almost all of them intend- 

 ing to become physicians, and some of 

 them to become surgeons, and to this end 

 they are building up a picture of the hit- 

 man body which will be useful to them in 

 their profession. They are doing this by 

 the aid of the best pedagogical means at 

 their command, namely, the reinforcement 

 of the ocular impressions by the contact 

 and muscular sensations that come from 

 the actual performance of the dissection 

 itself. If previously they have had some 

 experience in the dissection of the lower 

 mammals, they will note at once the differ- 

 ences shown in the case of man, and if 

 their embryology is at their command, it 

 will be easy for. them on suggestion or on 

 their own initiative to appreciate how some 

 of the peculiar relations between parts of 

 the human body have been developed. 

 Beyond this the information obtained is 

 of the same order as that of the vocabulary 

 of a language. The student gets a certain 

 number of discrete pictures of the different 

 parts of the body more or less clearly im- 



