An address delivered at the opening of the classes of the Medical School attached to the Middlesex Hospital, October 1st, 1845 / by Alexander Shaw.

  • Alexander Shaw
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered at the opening of the classes of the Medical School attached to the Middlesex Hospital, October 1st, 1845 / by Alexander Shaw. 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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    ways:—First, you are bound to learn accurately the different organs; making yourselves acquainted with their forms, textures, relative positions, and the tech- nical names applied to them. This constitutes the division called Descriptive Anatomy. Such knowledge is obviously indispensable to the medical man. For understanding the most common injuries, the most common diseases, it is imperatively required. Without it, he could never decide correctly what structures, whether important in their nature or not, were involved in any accident or any morbid pro- cess. The medical practitioner ought, in short, to be as intimately acquainted with all the structures beneath the skin, as with the faces of his nearest relatives. But to conquer that knowledge, the student must arm himself for a severe conflict. In the whole body, the parts to be learned are as if inexhaustibly numerous: in the diflFerent systems of organs, the objects are so like each other, that it is extremely difficult to retain the distinctions between them in the memory : in the regions, where it is of the highest importance to know the relations of the structures accurately, the parts vary so much in proximity, even in a small space, —changing their relations, as it were, capriciously, at least, without any apparent general rule,—that the mind is very apt to get confused. Again, the forms of the different organs, although fashioned according to the highest wisdom, are yet so inconceivably varied in contour and outline,—so unhke the symmetrical, straight-Hned, or curvilinear, regular shapes, generally met with in human mechanism,—that it is exceedingly difficult to carry the impression of their figures long in the mind. Ilcncc, I venture to say, that however ex-
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