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.

    17/292
    accomplifhed and fet up. It was an unlucky theory of this kind that carried the great Albinus, for fifteen years, through a courfe of laborious difledlions, painful and ufelefs to himfelf; but ufeful to all thofe who have to follow him: Still each drawing of his is but a mere plan, refembling no individual body, refembling in nothing the general drawing of the body; it is fueh a view as never is to be feen in a difledtion. It is not, like our Couper’s nor like Bidloo’s, a true drawing of mufcles dafhed with touches of glands, and fat, and cellular fubftance, which are the natural diflindiions of parts; nor mixed with the branchings of arteries or nerves, the chief objedts for which we Rudy the mufcles j but it is like a ftatue anatomifed, where all the irregularities of fub- flance, all the gradations of bones, ligaments, tendons, and flelh, are rounded down with a ftudied fmoothnefs; it is a figure which the ftudent can never compare with the body as it lies before him for difledtion ; it is a figure fuiting more the eye of the painter than the eye of the anatomift; nor even pleafant to his eye, fmce it Hands in attitudes, which no fwelling of particular mufcles feems to fupport. In the other extreme is Bidloo ; for, in his plates, the mafter- hand of the painter prevails almoft alone; while whole fheets of infinite labour ferve only to explain the joinings of the clavicles, or perhaps the form of one trifling mufcle or gland. The formal fi- b gures