302 



A. Macalister, 



Hunterian Museum, and although the labours of Owen, Huxley, Flower 

 and Parker in Animal Morphology have been of the foremost impor- 

 tance in Biological Science, yet their teachings have but little affected 

 our Medical schools, or the methods of study of Human Anatomy, 

 which in London have owed more to the work of Sharpey, than per- 

 haps to that of any other single man. 



In the Metropolis the teaching of Anatomy suffers from its divorce 

 from Comparative Anatomy on the one hand, and from Histology in 

 the other. This latter separation is a double evil, although it has 

 arisen in a way very easily understood. The present state of the 

 law limits considerably the amount of practical work which the 

 Professor of Physiology can set for his pupils to do in the laboratory, 

 and consequently he is compelled to expand the physiological side of 

 Histology, often it is to be feared to the detriment of those branches 

 of Physiology which are more exclusively his own; and, as the Pro- 

 fessor of Anatomy has usually enough to occupy most of his time, in 

 the superintendence of his practical department, he has in many cases 

 been led to relinquish altogether the practical Histology classes, which 

 are as properly his province as is the dissecting room. For this state 

 of things, however, others than the teachers are responsible. 



In the University Schools in other parts of Britain, the teaching 

 of Anatomy has been for many years, in the hands of men specially 

 set apart for the work; although in some of these (as that of Queen's 

 College Belfast, the largest Medical School in Ireland), it is much 

 to be regretted, that the whole of the burden of teaching both of 

 Anatomy and of Physiology, should be cast upon one single Professor. 

 In the British Universities, the Anatomical Professors do not now en- 

 gage in Medical or Surgical practice. And hence it is in these schools that 

 the most important advances in anatomical knowledge have taken 

 place, as well as the principal improvements in Anatomical method. 

 The successive editions of the chief British work on Anatomy, Quain's 

 Handbook, are interesting, as indicating the stirring up of increased 

 interest in morphological teaching in Britain, and although the suc- 

 cessive redactions of that valuable work, have become for a great part 

 the putting of new cloth on an old garment, yet it has succeeded in 

 keeping itself up to the level of the day in most departments except 



