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FIRST STEPS

ΤΟ

ANATOMY.

BY

JAMES L. DRUMMOND, M.D.

PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN THE ROYAL BELFAST

INSTITUTION..

LONDON:

JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW.

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PREFACE.

THE title of this little work expresses in truth the object which is its principal aim, namely, to prepare the young medical student by some initiatory broad views of the general component parts of the animal frame, that he may thereby be better enabled to enter on the innumerable and minute details of physiology and descriptive anatomy. It too often happens that students are late in joining classes of medical science, and hence they lose a number of the early lectures; the evil consequences of which may be felt throughout the entire session.

I should only advert, however, to my own class in the Royal Belfast Institution, many of the members of which consist, annually, of first-year students, and numbers of those come from the country in complete ignorance of everything connected with medical science. Some have never read a line on the subject of anatomy; and though a few may have been for some time in an apothe

cary's shop, or had access to a country dispensary, they are scarcely better informed.

It is customary to appropriate the first lectures of the course to an explanation of the general component materials of which the animal body is composed, and these are consequently lost to all who have been dilatory in joining the class. After repeated experience of the injurious effects resulting from this defect of introductory knowledge, I thought of putting some of the lectures alluded to into a printed form, so as to serve, at least, as a partial remedy for the evil. On considering the subject farther, I dressed the following preliminary matter of my course in what I conceived to be somewhat of a popular style, and, with some illustrations, I now offer it to the public, in the hope, perhaps a vain one, that it may prove of interest, not to the medical student alone, but to the general reader.

I regret that the illustrations possess too little of an original character, they being mostly copied from other works; though I trust that they will sufficiently answer their intended object.

J. L. D.

Belfast, Sept. 1845.

FIRST STEPS

ΤΟ

ANATOMY.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT is Anatomy?—The term is derived from the Greek avarɛμvw (anatemno), to cut up; but it implies much more than the simple act of dissection: it includes whatever relates to the structure of any organ, its situation, form, dimensions, weight, connexions, consistence, colour, development-in short, everything connected with it as an organic structure; and hence Anatomy has been defined "The Science of Organization."

And what is Physiology?-This word is derived from quais (phusis), nature, and λoyos (logos), a discourse; and hence any essay, discourse, or book, on Natural History, might be considered a work on Physiology: but the term has been long restricted to the phenomena

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