Holden's human osteology : comprising a description of the bones with delineations of the attachments of the muscles, the general and microscopic structure of bone and its development / edited by Charles Stewart and R.W. Reid.

  • Holden, Luther, 1815-1905.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Holden's human osteology : comprising a description of the bones with delineations of the attachments of the muscles, the general and microscopic structure of bone and its development / edited by Charles Stewart and R.W. Reid. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/508
    Importance and Interest of Osteolog-y.—Whoever would become a good anatomist and a skilful surgeon must make him- self master of Human Osteology. It must be, not only his first, but his principal and constant study. He cannot understand his dissections without continually referring to the skeleton. Nor can he fail to be interested from the first in the science, if in studying each bone he will compare it with the corresponding bone in his own body, in order that he may become famihar with what he can feel of it in the living subject. He will thus see in osteology, not death, but life. In discovering and reducing the simplest dislocation, how important it is to have a competent knowledge of the feel of the bony j)arts and their relations to one another ! A little progress wiU convince him that, far from being dry, osteology is attractive, not only as conducive to professional success, but for its own sake. Undertaken in a right spmt, the study of it becomes, with many, a favourite pursuit, and creates a natural longing to know something of the skeleton of the lower animals, that we may the better judge of the advantageous construction of our own; for it is only by comparison that we can judge, When the great truth unfolds itself, that our own structure appears to be but a modification of the ' one common pattern ' upon which aU vertebrate animals are formed, we cannot but feel with the philosophic poet, that— 'Tis the sablime of man, Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves Parts and proportions of a wondrous whole. GoLEllIDGE.