INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 
619 
other physical attributes ; he seeks other information than that 
which the preceding, or Descriptive Anatomy , as it is called, can 
furnish. He requires to be made acquainted with the intimate 
structure and composition of the bones and cartilages, the liga- 
ments, the muscles and their tendons and aponeuroses, the 
vessels, the nerves, and the viscera ; he seeks, in fact, that learn- 
ing which is comprised under the term General Anatomy. 
General Anatomy resolves the animal body into separate tissues, 
such as osseous tissue, fibrous tissue, muscular tissue, &c. ; these 
tissues, again, are distinguished according to their more elementary 
composition of proximate organic elements , viz. of fibrine, albu- 
men, gelatin, &c. ; and these latter it further resolves iato ulti- 
mate organic elements , viz. oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, 
&c., beyond which man’s investigation is unable to proceed. 
Such is the anatomy of health ; but it not unfrequently happens 
that the constituents of the body, altered by disease, put on ap- 
pearances different from their normal characters ; the study of 
these peculiarities, with which we become familiar by continuous 
application and observation, constitutes Morbid or Pathological 
Anatomy . 
It is needless to enlarge upon the advantages of anatomy, or 
upon the necessity of a thorough knowledge of its branches to 
the physician and the surgeon. I may illustrate its value by in- 
quiring, how the physician can detect and distinguish a disease 
of the heart, a disease of the lungs, of the stomach, or of the 
kidney, without a clear perception of the situation of these 
organs? How can the accoucheur establish a correct diagnosis 
as to the result of a case of difficult labour, without a perfect 
knowledge of the anatomy of the pelvis and its dependencies? 
How can the medical jurist announce an opinion on the effects 
of poison or injury inflicted on the tissues of the body, without 
a knowledge of these tissues in their normal state? in what 
manner can the surgeon discover the parts injured by a bullet 
shot, or by a small sword wound, who is not thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the structure of the regions in which the injury is 
received? — or, again. How could he perform an operation calling 
for a lengthened dissection, among parts rendered intricate by 
morbid displacement, without being able to recognise, at every 
line of his progress, the tissues between and through which his 
knife is making its way? 
Anatomy, again, teaches us the presence of an Eternnl Wisdom 
in the construction of the animal frame— it teaches us to compre- 
hend an omniscient design. That design which, to sustain the 
huge carcass of the elephant with the material necessary for his 
nutrition, provided him with millstones, in the form of teeth, for 
the trituration of the vegetable substance on which he feeds; — 
