A text-book of anatomy / edited by Frederic Henry Gerrish.

Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book of anatomy / edited by Frederic Henry Gerrish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    11/930
    PREFACE. In their work as teachers of anatomy the authors of this vohime have long felt the need of a text-book, which, while presenting the essential facts of human structure, judiciously avoids the unimportant and exceptional. They believe that the students in medical schools should neither be encouraged to depend upon pocket manuals nor be compelled to resort to encyclopaedias. Between the extremes of flavorless condensation and universal inclusiveness is a middle ground whereon should be marshalled in systematic array those portions of anatomical knowledge which, with our present information, are seen to be necessary pre- liminaries to the intelligent study of physiology, surgery, and internal medicine; and from this field should be excluded the much greater collection of facts, which, however important to a worlv which designs to be exhaustive, have no known practical bearing, or only such possible application as will make them available for a useful purpose once or twice in a generation. The authors have endeavored to make a text-book which, as far as possible, shall stand in the place of a living teacher to the student—selecting from the vast accumulation of material those portions which are likely to be of actual service to the pupil in his subsequent study and to tlie practitioner in his clinical work, emphasizing the most important, striving to clarify obscurities, giving the greatest amount of help in the parts which are most difficult to learn, and illus- trating everything by all available methods. They may have slighted facts which others would have introduced ; they certainly, as a matter of policy, have admit- ted many things which, in their judgment, are not essential to the student, except for the aid they aiford him in meeting certain conventional demands, especially on the part of examiners, who may not have emancipated themselves from the tram- mels of tradition. The material facts have been gathered from the rich stores of information, which are recognized as the common property of science. No attempt is made to give credit to the discoverers, to whose eiforts the })resent advanced state of anatomy is due; and this omission is justified by two I'easons: first, the impossibility of determining the (U-iginal source in a majority of cases, and, second, the undesirability of loading a primary text-book with historical data which are not helpful in practical work. The various topics ha\^e been arranged on familiar lines, the ordinary divisions of systematic anatomy having been followed in the main ; but each author has set forth his subjects according to the methods which his experience has shown him to be profitable, and some of these will be seen to be diflFerent from (and, it is hoped, better than) those in ordinary vogue. Greater relative stress has been laid upon visceral structure, without neglect of the other branches; surface anatomy has received attention more in proportion to its usefulness than is usual;
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