192

CHAPTER XII.

THOUGHTS ON ANATOMICAL EDUCATION.

It has been stated in the preface to the foregoing observations, that my chief object in publishing them was to supply, in some measure, the loss which anatomical students suffer from not attending the commencement of courses of lectures. But it must be obvious that such means can only be effective in a very minor degree, since more can be clearly comprehended by seeing the specimens themselves, combined with large explanatory drawings and diagrams to assist them, than could be by the most particular description without such aid.

The first year's attendance of a student on medical lectures is often considered to be of such slight importance, that it matters little whether his progress be slow or not; it is considered as a kind of breaking in, an opening merely, to the field of study on which he is entering; and that, should he do little during

ANATOMICAL EDUCATION.

193

the first session, all deficiencies can be made up with little difficulty in those which are to follow. This I conceive to be a vital mistake. The first medical session is to the student the most important, perhaps, of all sessions; and if, during it, his studies be slurred over, if he do not acquire habits of attention and thinking, if he fall into the lazy apathy of letting what he hears at one ear pass out at the other, if he let his thoughts wander to foreign subjects, instead of keeping them fixed on that treated of by the lecturer, and to which he ought to give his undivided attention, the best that can be said of his acquirements, at the close of the session, will be, that they consist of a heterogeneous mass of ideas, fixed on no solid basis, and connected by no tie of systematic union. In anatomy, he may know a little of the bones, a little of the muscles, a little of the bloodvessels, a little of the viscera, &c. but he knows nothing as he should do; and, having spent his first session in so desultory and fruitless a manner, the probability will be, that his second and succeeding sessions may be passed over in a similar way; so that, at length, his final resource will be, during weeks and months of anxiety and distress, to remain in the hands of

R

a grinder, till he have the chance of passing an examination for his degree or diploma.

It would be unfair to insinuate that all students thus mismanage their studies; but no teacher will deny that it is an extremely frequent occurrence, though there are always some young men who, from the first, are sensible of the importance and necessity of making the best use of their time; and it will invariably be found, that those who have honestly studied during the first, will continue to do so through every succeeding session, and will always hold a high position over their more careless companions. In the remarks now made, I have no intention of bringing a sweeping accusation against medical students, as if they were more given to idleness than those of any other description. I believe that the fault lies, not in the student, but in the plan of anatomical education which has been so long pursued; and the proper remedy for the evil would be, I conceive, to approximate, at least for the first session, such education, as nearly as possible, to the method followed with regard to the classics, and the other branches of knowledge taught in our ordinary schools. If a boy commence the Latin grammar, he must

ANATOMICAL EDUCATION.

195

first commit to memory the declensions, and understand them well, before he learns the pronouns, and these before he goes on to the conjugations, &c. If he learn arithmetic, he is not permitted to commence subtraction until he has mastered addition, nor to multiplication till he has mastered subtraction, nor to division till he has learned the other three. He must get well acquainted with any one branch before he is allowed to go on to the next. It would be absurd to put him into the second book of Euclid while he remained ignorant of the first. But, in a course of anatomy, the student has, in the progress of the lectures, to listen to the descriptions and details of the most complicated parts of the human structure, when, perhaps, he is most imperfectly acquainted with osteology and myology, which form the very grammar of the science, and consequently, he can scarcely understand, and certainly not digest, the greater part of what he hears.

I have just stated, that I consider the bones and muscles as the grammar of anatomy, and I would propose that no one should have the privilege of being enrolled as a second year's student until he had proved, by a close exami

nation, that he had acquired a sufficient knowledge of these during his first. But I would go farther than this, I would make the entire first winter's course a preparatory one. When we consider that a large majority of medical students commence as mere youths, and that they often remove at once from school to college, it must be plain, that with almost every branch of information connected with medical studies, directly or collaterally, they must necessarily be totally unacquainted, how can it be expected that minds so unprepared will make much certain progress through the numerous and difficult branches of anatomy, constituting a course, as taught in our medical schools, the technical terms of which alone, independent of anything else, require no ordinary degree of attention and memory to secure and retain?

But, were the young student to go through a first course, in which he would be absolutely obliged to acquire a competent knowledge of osteology and myology, the two great fundamental roots of the science, and in which he would also have laid before him extended views of the animal economy, not confined to man alone, but embracing every class in the animal kingdom,