Engravings, explaining the anatomy of the bones, muscles, and joints. / By John Bell, surgeon.

  • Bell, John, 1763-1820.
Date:
MDCCXCIV. [1794]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Engravings, explaining the anatomy of the bones, muscles, and joints. / By John Bell, surgeon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    “ As I proceeded in writing a book of anatomy, I felt more “ and more, at every flep, the neceffity of giving plates to it for a book of anatomy without thefe feemed to me no better than a book of geography without its maps ; it was, in my mind, like teaching mathematics without diagrams, or folving Euclid’s pro- blems without the help of figures or lines, by the mere force of imagination alone. Indeed any one, who, fludying without fome help of plates, tries to underhand and to remember an anatomical description with no other reprefentation than words merely, will feel, that he is like one attempting to work a. rule of arithmetic without the ufe of cyphers, trying to remember the value and denomination of each part throughout the whole train of num- bers ; he is ingenious in difficulties, making an abflradl fubjedl of one belonging to the fenfes chiefly, and attempting to obtain by words, thofe ideas which mufl come to him only through the eye. It was while I was writing anatomical defcriptions that I firfl thought of drawings, and of placing my fubjecls in thofe Very fhapes andpoflures in which they were explained and I conceiv- ed, that the defcriptions and the drawings might thus be wrought into one perfe<5t whole; being as two parts of one idea, or as one idea prefented in a double form, once to the eye, and once again to the ear. If, in any material points, my drawings and defcriptions fliall thus agree, then mufl the ideas be made out to my reader clear and fair, and fliould infinuate themfelves into his mind without labour or a 2 thought