An introductory lecture delivered in the hall of the medical department of the St. Louis University, November 4th, 1845 / by M.L. Linton.
- Linton, M. L. (Moses L.), 1808-1872.
- Date:
- 1845
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An introductory lecture delivered in the hall of the medical department of the St. Louis University, November 4th, 1845 / by M.L. Linton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![[11] thy states and actions of the system, in order to be enabled to estimate its diseased states and actions. That important branch of our studies, Anatomy, is less dependent on and connected with chemistry, than are the other brandies. It has nothing to do with the ultimate elements of the tissues or their uses. It merely describes the shape and points out the situation of the parts ; it teaches the geography of the system ; it does not tell what this or that does, but where it is, and how situated, in regard to other parts in its vicinity. A few considerations will demonstrate the necessity of this study. In the first place it is necessary for the mere practitioner of medicine. How can he know that a particular organ or part is diseased unless he knows its situation, unless he knows where it is ? How can he dis- tinguish the point of derangement in the animal machine unless its me- chanism be familiar to him ? But for the surgeon, anatomical knowledge is indispensable. When the broken or dislocated bone has to be re-ad- justed ; when the deep seated tumor has to be cut out; when the artery has to be tied ; the strictured hernia reduced; the trephine to be applied; the limb to be amputated; the cateract to be extracted, who would dare to act without a knowledge of the parts ? It is here that the heartless and unprincipled quack refuses to act, because guesswork will not do! Positive science is necessary. Armed with this, the surgeon goes for- ward with a confidence which nothing else can inspire in the discharge of the highest and most perilous duties that can devolve on man. There on one side throbs the artery whose gush would be death. He is within a hair's breadth of it. Here on the other hand courses the nerve whose injury would entail palsy. Just beneath, are some of the canals which carry the delicate fluids of nutrition to the crimson foun- tain of life. Dangers stand thick in every direction ; but the learned surgeon knows his whereabouts, and with unshaken fortitude and steady nerve steers his sharp prowed vessel, the scalpel, with safety—though harder beset than the Argo that passed the justling rocks of the Bos- phorus, or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned Charybdis and by the other whirlpool steered. It is here that knowledge gives courage as well as power, it is here that some of the most glorious triumphs of art are achieved ; triumphs over death himself, which relaxes his hold of his victim at the fiat of mortal man. Well does such an art merit the title divine. I need not plead in behalf of the study of anatomy as an auxilliary in the relief of human suffering : but for it, the throbbing aneurism, the excruciating hernia the grinding calculus would be without a rem- edy. Some persons seem to have an idea that anatomists are unfeeling men—indeed that Doctors generally are—that they have no more re- gard for the bodies of dead men than butchers have for a slaughtered beef. Not so. These sad remains, are for them constant mementi mori, teaching the salutary lesson that they too must die and go hence ; and if the meditative mind can find books in the running brooks,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21137146_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
