Some Characteristics 

 of Anatomical Teaching in Great Britain 



by 



A. Macalister. 



The cultivation of Practical Anatomy in the earlier days of the 

 British Schools of Medicine, was but indifferently provided for ; few 

 teachers were specially set apart for the purpose, and the facilities 

 of place and arrangement at their disposal, were imperfect and un- 

 suitable. 



Most of our professorships of Anatomy do not date back beyond 

 the eighteenth century, and excepting some condemned criminals, there 

 was no legal provision for the supply of bodies for dissection before 

 the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832. Comparatively little dis- 

 section was practised in Britain before the end of the 17th century; 

 and in Edinburgh there seems to have been no proper place for its 

 practice before 1694. In the only record of a dissection before that 

 date in Ireland, the account is preserved of the money paid to the sol- 

 diers for watching and for the keeping of a watchdog to protect the 

 dissectors. As a consequence of this the British Anatomical literature 

 of the 16th and 17th centuries, is for the most part as insignificant in 

 quality as it is small in quantity, the works of Gemini, Crooke, 

 Winston and Keill being simple adaptation from the Italians. Cowper, 

 Havers, Bayfield and Gibson are among the only writers of originality : 

 and they, like Harvey and Highmore studied their Anatomy abroad. 



In the latter half of the eighteenth century a largely increased 

 attention began to be bestowed on Practical Anatomy in Britain. The 



Internationale Monatsschrift für Anat. u. Hist. I. 19 



