Anatomy as taught in the University of Edinburgh : an introductory lecture, delivered 4th November 1867 / by William Turner.

  • William Turner
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anatomy as taught in the University of Edinburgh : an introductory lecture, delivered 4th November 1867 / by William Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    so invested with the halo of antiquity, and, in not unfrequent instances, are associated with the names of great and honoured anatomists, that to discard them now from our vocabulary would be most inexpedient. During the last two centuries and a half the spread of learn- ing over Europe, the large increase in the number of investigators, owing to the zeal with which the natural sciences have been pursued, and the special need of a knowledge of the structure and functions of the human body in connexion with the practice of the healing art, have given an additional stimulus to anatomical study, and have extended largely our acquaintance with the appearance, form, position, and relations of the constituent parts of our frame. But though so many skilled observers have directed their attention to this aspect of the subject, yet we are not in a position to say that we have reached the limit of inquiry, and that our information on such matters as we can see with our un- assisted eyes, or touch with our hands, is incapable of further expansion. For as our science is in a state of constant progress, and as questions are continually arising which were not dreamt of by our predecessors, the work of former years requires to be revised, and features in construction are discovered which had previously been overlooked. In such well-known and apparently exhausted regions as the hand and foot, the discussions of the last few years respecting the comparative morphology of the limbs of men and monkeys have led to the observation of arrangements of muscles and tendons which had not hitherto been noticed. What an important advance has recently been made in unravelling the complex disposition of the muscular fibres of the heart, the bladder, and other hollow viscera! How recent is the period in which we could say that we had arrived at even an approximation to a precise knowledge of the lobes and convolutions of the cerebrum! and even yet we may question if the thread which should guide us through all their windings has been grasped. In which of our text-books are the surfaces of the moveable joints described with sufficient exactness to enable the mechanism of the articulations to be properly under- stood? But, along with the study of the appearance, form, position, and relations of the constituent parts of the body- -aspects of the science
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