med. Lib 
 
 OS
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 A SKETCH 
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 COURSE OF LECTURES ON ANATOMY 
 
 AT THE 
 
 PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL OF ANATOMY. 
 
 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1874. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM W. KEEN, M.D., 
 
 Lecturer on Anatomy and Operative Surgery in the Philadelphia School of Anatomy ; Lecturer on 
 Pathological Anatomy in the Jefferson Medical College j Fell6w of the College of 
 Physicians of Philadelphia ; Member of the Academy of Natural 
 Sciences of Philadelphia, etc. etc. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 1874.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 W. W. KEEN, M.D. 
 
 DEAR SIR: The Class of 1874-5 In the Philadelphia School of 
 Anatomy having heard with unfeigned interest your lecture of last even- 
 ing on the " Early History of Practical Anatomy," earnestly solicit a copy 
 for publication. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Your obedient servants, 
 
 W. W. VAN VALZAH, 
 R. H. MCCARTY, M.D., 
 J. CRAIG MILLER, 
 
 Committee. 
 PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 7, 1874. 
 
 Messrs. W. W. VAN VALZAH, R. H. McCARTY, M.D., and J. CRAIG 
 MILLER, Committee. 
 
 GENTLEMEN : Your note, on behalf of the Class, requesting a copy 
 of my Address for publication, is received, and I accede to your polite re- 
 quest with pleasure. My Address was delivered before the Class of 1870, 
 and published by them, but the edition was very soon exhausted. Since 
 that time I have made a number of corrections and additions, especially 
 to the notes. Hoping that it may lead you to more thorough studies in 
 the History of Anatomy, I remain, gentlemen, 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 W. W. KEEN, M.D. 
 1729 CHESTNUT STREET, 
 
 Philadelphia, Oct. 10, 1874.
 
 THE EARLY HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 IN welcoming you here this evening, gentlemen, at the 
 beginning of the winter session, and welcome you I do 
 with the sincerest pleasure, it has occurred to me that 
 in no way could we spend a pleasanter hour than in re- 
 viewing the Early History of Practical Anatomy. We 
 shall see in the difficulties that attended its introduction, 
 and the improvements that have been gradually intro- 
 duced, how much better off we are than were our prede- 
 cessors, and how zealously we should avail ourselves of 
 these advantages. 
 
 The life and labors of Vesalius have been so often and 
 so fully discussed, that you have readily at hand the means 
 of acquainting yourselves with them. I shall not, there- 
 fore, enter into these in detail, but only allude to them 
 when necessary. But Vesalius, who was born in 1514, 
 although the real father of anatomy, was by no means the 
 first who practised human dissection. If we wish to see 
 its starting-point, we must go back to ancient times. We 
 must retrace our steps to the third century before Christ, 
 and transfer ourselves from the amphitheatre of Padua to 
 that of Alexandria, to discover the bold innovators who 
 
 3
 
 4 EARL Y HISTOR Y OF 
 
 first forced the dead human body to disclose its secrets 
 for the benefit of the living. 
 
 Two centuries earlier still, Democritus and Hippocrates 
 had taken the first tentative steps, in the examination of 
 the bodies of the inferior animals, butjthey ventured no 
 further than this. 
 
 It is in Alexandria, three hundred years before Christ, 
 that we meet with the first human anatomists, Herophilus 
 and Erasistratus ; and they are said to have been such zeal- 
 ous cultivators of the new science that they not only dis- 
 sected the dead human body, but even the living, in order 
 to search for the hidden springs of life itself. 1 It is curious 
 to note how this belief that anatomists were addicted to 
 ante-mortem dissection has not been peculiar to Egypt, 
 but has pervaded all lands and all times. Vesalius was 
 shipwrecked and died, when fleeing for his life on a 
 similar charge. 2 The Edinburgh act of 1505, giving the 
 surgeons the body of one criminal annually "to make an 
 anatomic of," was guarded by the proviso, "after he be 
 deid," 3 and even Staupa, a medical man, in his book on 
 dissection, published in 1827, gravely advises the student 
 to assure himself that the body is "really dead." 4 Even 
 
 1 Biographic Medicale par ordre chronologique, par MM. Bayle et 
 Thillaye, Paris, 1855, tome i. p. 40. This charge of Tertullian is reason- 
 ably accounted for on the ground that such rumors would naturally attach 
 themselves to the first dissectors of the human body. It is stated that 
 Cocchi, in his " De Usu Art. Anat.," Florence, 1736, has vindicated them 
 from the charge. Surgeons, however, not infrequently have been allowed 
 to test operations on criminals, who were pardoned if they survived. 
 Galen thus operated in cases of nerve-wounds, and Pare, Colot, and 
 numerous other surgeons, in cases of lithotomy. 
 
 a Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., tome i. p. 231. 
 
 3 Prof. Struthers's Hist. Edin. Anatom. School, Edin. Med. Journ., Oct. 
 1866, p. 289, note. 
 
 4 Hyrtl, Handbuch der Zergliederungskunst, pp. 51-2.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 5 
 
 poetry has lent its aid to perpetuate the legend of the 
 "Invisible Girl," whose ghost was believed to haunt Sir 
 Charles Bell's anatomical rooms, where she had been dis- 
 sected alive on the night preceding that appointed for 
 her marriage. 1 
 
 But the example of Alexandria in the cultivation of 
 
 1 See Gibson's Rambles in Europe, pp. 143-4. The poem does not 
 follow the legend as to the dissection's being ante-mortem. 
 
 THE INVISIBLE GIRL. 
 i. 7. 
 
 'Twas in the middle of the night I vowed that you should take my hand, 
 
 To sleep young William tried ; But fate gave us denial ; 
 
 When Mary's ghost came 
 And stood at his bedside 
 
 ng in 
 
 You'll find it there at Dr. Bell's, 
 In spirits and a phial. 
 
 Oh, William, dear! Oh, William, 
 
 My rest eternal ceases ; 
 Alas ! My everlasting peace 
 
 Is broken into pieces. 
 
 dear ! As for my feet, my little feet, 
 You used to call so pretty, 
 There's one, I know, in Bedford Re 
 The t'other 's in the city. 
 
 I thought the last of all my cares 
 Would end with my last minute, 
 
 But when I went to my last home, 
 I didn't long stay in it. 
 
 I can't tell where my head is gone, 
 
 But Dr. Carpue can ; 
 As for my trunk, it's all packed up 
 
 To go by Pickford's van. 
 
 The body-snatchers, they have come 
 And made a snatch at me ; 
 
 It's very hard them kind of men 
 Can't let a body be. 
 
 I wish you'd go to Mr. P. 
 
 And save me such a ride ; 
 I don't half like the outside place 
 
 They've took for my inside. 
 
 You thought that I was buried deep, 
 Quite Christian-like and chary ; 
 
 But from her grave in Mary-le-bone, 
 They've come and boned your Mary. 
 
 The cock, it crows, I must be gone ; 
 
 My William, we must part; 
 But I'll be your's in death, although 
 
 Sir Astley has my heart. 
 
 The arm that used to take your arm 
 
 Is took to Dr. Vyse ; 
 And both my legs are gone to walk 
 
 The hospital at Guy's. 
 
 Don't go to weep upon my grav 
 And think that there I be ; 
 
 They haven't left an atom there 
 Of my anatomy.
 
 6 EARL Y HISTOR Y OF 
 
 anatomy aroused no imitators no rivals. For several 
 centuries Egypt was the only medical centre of the world. 
 Anatomists of every country resorted thither, and in the 
 second century after Christ we find Galen compelled to 
 go from Pergamus to Alexandria in order to see a skeleton. 
 Even in Rome itself, and as court physician at a later 
 period, Galen could dissect nothing but the lower animals. 
 The burning of the dead by the Romans prohibited totally 
 any attempt at anatomy, and instead of sending his stu- 
 dents to Egypt to study anatomy, he sent them to Ger- 
 many to dissect the slain among the national enemies, 
 while he contented himself with the ape. 1 
 
 This feeble light at Rome and Alexandria, however, 
 was soon extinguished, and human dissection disappeared 
 from history for twelve centuries. The twilight of the 
 well-named "Dark Ages" had set in, and when, in A.D. 
 640, the vast treasures of the Alexandrian library were 
 burned, night itself came on. So long and so deep has 
 that night been in the very natal city of human anatomy 
 that it is but six years since the death of Clot Bey, the 
 first public lecturer on anatomy in Alexandria for about 
 seventeen hundred years; and so strong are Mussulman 
 prejudice and hatred, that, although under the protection 
 of the Pasha Mehemet Ali, when he first opened the 
 thorax of a body a student rushed upon him and stabbed 
 him with a poniard. The blade slid over the ribs, and 
 Clot Bey, perceiving that he was not seriously hurt, took 
 a piece of plaster from his dressing-case, and, applying it 
 to the wound, coolly observed to the class, "We were 
 speaking, gentlemen, of the disposition of the ribs and 
 sternum, and I now have the opportunity of showing how 
 
 1 Hyrtl, Lehrbuch der Anatomic des Menschen, 8te Auflage, Wien, 
 1863, p. 230. William Hunter's Introductory Lectures, p. 24.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 7 
 
 a blow directed from above has so little chance of pene- 
 trating the thorax," and went calmly on with his lecture. 1 
 
 The Mohammedans, into whose hands medicine passed 
 at the fall of Alexandria, wholly abandoned dissection, 
 and, as we have just seen, had even the fiercest prejudice 
 against it, based on its prohibition by the Koran and the 
 seven days' ceremonial uncleanness it denounced against 
 all who even touched a dead body. Galen's anatomy of 
 the ape reigned supreme till the time of Vesalius, in 1543. 
 Even then this substitution of the lower animals for man 
 was neither wholly nor easily overthrown. In Paris we 
 find Sylvius, the teacher, and afterwards the fierce oppo- 
 nent of Vesalius as an innovator, lecturing "from small 
 fragments of dogs." 2 The ape was preferred by many on 
 account of its outward resemblance to man, but swine 
 were the favorites, 3 because, being omnivorous animals, 
 they still more closely resembled the human race, "es- 
 pecially," says Hyrtl, with one of his usual sly thrusts, 
 "certain individuals among them." Vesalius himself so 
 far yielded to the popular fancy that some of his descrip- 
 tions are drawn from this very source, and the frontispiece 
 of his anatomy, in the edition of 1555, shows a perfect 
 menagerie of apes, goats, and dogs. In 1627, Spigelius 
 similarly honors the swine ; 4 and even so lately as the 
 middle of the last century, William Hunter tells us that 
 "the operations of surgery were still explained to very 
 little purpose upon a dog." 5 
 
 But with the rise of the Italian universities came the 
 first gleams of light. Bologna, the oldest of them all, is 
 
 1 Medical Times and Gaz., Sept. 19, 1868. 
 
 2 Morley's Life of Jerome Cardan, vol. ii. p. 100. 
 
 3 Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 28. Text and note. 
 
 4 Ibid. 
 
 5 Introductory Lectures, p. 88.
 
 8 EARL Y HIS TOR Y OF 
 
 in many respects the most famous. Founded in 1119 as a 
 school of Roman law, the fame of her professors was such 
 that, as early as 1262, no less than ten thousand students 
 were gathered there. 1 The faculties of medicine and of 
 arts were founded before the fourteenth century, and soon 
 added to her fame. Here, two centuries before Vesalius 
 was born, the first dissections of modern times were made. 
 In 1315, Mondini, or Mundinus, publicly dissected two 
 female bodies, 2 and established what was intended to be 
 an annual custom, but which, strange to say, was soon 
 neglected. Bologna, the first in the new era of medicine, 
 has not since then been behind her rivals in the healing 
 art. The names of Carpi, Vesalius, Arantius, Malpighi, 
 Valsalva, Varolius, and Galvani, alone, are enough to make 
 her famous. But she was also the earliest exponent of 
 one of the great questions of the present day in medical 
 as well as other circles. Her female professors have 
 rivalled their male associates in distinction. In medicine 
 she has even had a professor of anatomy, Madonna Man- 
 zolina, and, in 1865, I saw in the museum preparations 
 made by her that would do credit to our own times. 3 In 
 1732, Laura Bassi was made doctor of laws and lecturer on 
 philosophy, and in 1817, the immediate predecessor of that 
 
 1 Encyc. Britan., vol. xxi. p. 449. In the fourteenth century there were 
 thirteen thousand. Paris had at one time as many as thirty thousand. 
 
 2 New Am. Cyc., first ed., article "Anatomy," i. 519. Encyc. Brit., 
 eighth ed., article "Anatomy." Curiously enough, William Hunter, in 
 his Introductory Lectures, does not mention Mondini, but traces modern 
 anatomy back only to Leonardo, and says he was the first to go even thus 
 far back. 
 
 3 Notwithstanding diligent search in every history and encyclopaedia 
 here and in New York, I could find neither notice nor life of this leader 
 among female physicians. Unfortunately, my journal states only the fact 
 noted in the text. I would be glad to receive any information on the 
 subject.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 9 
 
 astonishing linguist, Mezzofanti, in the Greek chair, was 
 Matilda Tambroni. In the fourteenth century we find 
 Novella d' Andrea, the professor of canon law; 1 and such 
 was her beauty that she had a curtain 
 
 " Drawn before her, 
 , Lest if her charms were seen, the students 
 
 Should let their young eyes wander o'er her, 
 And quite forget their jurisprudence." 
 
 Yet notwithstanding the fame given to the Bolognese 
 School and the impulse given to anatomy by the teaching 
 of Mondini, the science retrograded, and all the Italian 
 schools declined. The time of renovation had not yet 
 arrived. The school of Salernum, which had been the 
 most famous for several centuries, mourned by Petrarch, 
 passed even out of existence. 2 The dark ages were not 
 yet over. Boccaccio laments that when -visiting the 
 library of the celebrated monastery of Monte-Casino, 
 near Naples, he found the doors gone, grass growing in 
 the windows, and the precious books and manuscripts yet 
 undestroyed covered with dust and mould. 3 
 
 From Mondini to Vesalius, the best anatomist of his 
 age was undoubtedly Leonardo da Vinci, the great artist. 
 Not only did he dissect the horse and other inferior 
 animals, but also the human body. From 'these dis- 
 sections he made his celebrated Sketch-book of drawings 
 in red chalk, now in the British royal collection at 
 
 1 Encyc. Brit., vol. xxi. p. 451. 
 
 2 Frederick II. (Charles II.? 1285-1309), of Naples, prohibited sur- 
 geons from practising unless they understood " the anatomy of the human 
 body, without which one cannot perform any operation, nor direct the 
 cure after having done it." Malgaigne's edition of Fare's works, Introd., 
 p. xxx. Did they then dissect? I can find no record of it, yet this would 
 suggest it strongly. 
 
 3 Malgaigne's Pare, Introd., p. xlvif.
 
 10 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 Windsor, and labelled by him with reversed letters, so 
 that they have to be read by a looking-glass. 1 
 
 But now came the revival of learning early in the six- 
 teenth century. That wonderful awakening of the human 
 mind which was manifested in the discovery of America, 
 of the passage to the East Indies, and of the solar system, 
 and in the invention of printing, of the compass, and of 
 gunpowder, could not but find a new path of progress in 
 medicine as well. Vesalius took the lead in 1537, as a 
 teacher of genuine anatomy in Padua, and in 1543 he 
 published his splendid work which soon revolutionized 
 the science. A host of anatomists followed in his path. 
 Columbus, Eustachius, Fallopius, Fabricius, Gasser, In- 
 grassius, Arantius, Vidius, Varolius, and others, all dili- 
 gent anatomists of the sixteenth century, have left their 
 mark in the household names of elementary anatomy. I 
 say elementary anatomy advisedly, for the first dissections 
 were both naturally and of necessity confined to the 
 grosser, ocular parts of the body. The bones, muscles, 
 and viscera were almost the only well-dissected and well- 
 described parts, and if we except Vidius and his perplex- 
 ing "Vidian nerve," none of the anatomists just men- 
 tioned have their names associated with any of the finer 
 parts. For sucH minuter investigation, grosser anatomy 
 had first to clear a path. Bodies also were too few, and 
 had to be too hastily dissected; and their instruments were 
 too imperfect. The dissecting-forceps, without which no 
 minuter dissection could be carried on, is not certainly 
 
 1 Wm. Hunter, Introd. Lect., pp. 37-39, and R. Knox, M.D., "Great 
 Artists and Great Anatomists," London, 1852, " Leonardo." It is un- 
 derstood that these sketches will soon be published. Many autotype 
 reproductions of other sketches by Leonardo have been published by 
 Braun, of Dornach, and they amply attest his wonderful knowledge of 
 anatomy.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 over one hundred and fifty years old, and may be far 
 less. 1 Not to speak of modern pictures representative of 
 practical anatomy, Rembrandt's famous painting in the 
 Hague, about two hundred years old, represents Van 
 Tulp demonstrating the muscles with our ordinary surgical 
 dressing-forceps. This awkward substitute, together with 
 double hooks on a handle, 2 and the fingers were then the 
 anatomist's only resources. Moreover, no good means 
 had as yet been devised for preserving bodies for more 
 prolonged and delicate dissections, nor for injecting the 
 vessels, nor for making permanent preparations, whether 
 for reference or for teaching ; and models were undreamed 
 of. Discouraged by many as a useless innovation ; frowned 
 upon by others as repugnant to our better feelings ; ob- 
 structed by the law; treated even as impious; fostered 
 only by the love of knowledge and by its own necessity, 
 the science found fewcultivators among the bulk of the 
 profession. 
 
 Among the teachers of anatomy it was not infrequent, 
 but beyond the lecture-room no dissecting-rooms existed. 
 Students saw the demonstration, and that was all. None 
 of them dissected for themselves. Nor when we come to 
 later times do we find the case rapidly bettered. The first 
 Monro says that in his student days, early in the last cen- 
 tury, his Scotch anatomy was limited "to seeing the dis- 
 section of the human body once in two or three years." 3 
 In William Hunter's time, at the end oi the same century, 
 practical anatomy was unknown to the mass of the pro- 
 fession until he established the celebrated Great Windmill 
 Street School. In 1866, we find Prof. Struthers, of Aber- 
 
 1 Hyrtl, Zerglied., pp. 19 and 20. 
 
 2 See them figured in Michael Lyser's Culter Anatomicus, Amstel., 
 
 1653- 
 
 3 Edin. Journal, Oct. 1866. " Hist. Edin. Anat. School."
 
 1 2 EARL Y HISTOR Y OF 
 
 deen, saying, "Less than a generation ago it was not an 
 uncommon thing to find medical practitioners who had 
 never dissected." J And even to-day, after considerable 
 personal experience as a teacher of anatomy, I have grave 
 doubts whether the majority of our students dissect the 
 human body more than once. 
 
 But, in spite of these obstacles, anatomy, both descrip- 
 tive and practical, went on gaining favor with both its 
 teachers and the profession at large. 
 
 Italy, the focus of the arts and sciences in the revival 
 of Greek learning, naturally took the lead. In her cele- 
 brated universities professorships of anatomy were founded 
 early in the sixteenth century, and her schools were 
 crowded with hundreds, and even thousands, of students 
 from all parts of Europe, who returned to their native 
 cities, carrying with them patriotic desires for the ad- 
 vancement of science in their own lands. 9 
 
 England was among the first to profit by the shining 
 example. Soon after the founding of the College of Sur- 
 geons in 1540, through the influence of Dr. Caius, the 
 king's physician, and the founder of Caius College, Cam- 
 bridge, Henry VIII. granted to the College of Surgeons 
 the privilege of dissecting four felons annually, and in 
 1564 Elizabeth gave the same privilege to the College of 
 Physicians. 3 In 1581 the latter college created the lec- 
 tureship on anatomy, and in 1583 built in Knight Rider 
 Street the first anatomical theatre. Here, in 1615, Harvey 
 was elected lecturer, or, as it was then called, reader, in 
 
 1 Edin. Journal, Oct. 1866. " Hist. Edin. Anat. School." 
 a From 1204, when the University of Vicenza (the first after Bologna) 
 was founded, to 1445, eighteen universities were founded in Italy alone, 
 and thirteen more in other parts of Europe, to which thirteen others were 
 added before the year 1500. 
 
 3 " The Gold-headed Cane," pp. 91-2.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. ! 3 
 
 anatomy, and here he gave his first public demonstrations 
 of the circulation of the blood about a year later. 1 
 
 The facilities for general medical dissection, however, 
 were very limited, and, as if to discourage it still further, 
 in 1745 a fine of ^10 was imposed on any one dissecting 
 outside of Barber-Surgeons' Hall. But such a state of 
 affairs could not long exist. The profession, under the 
 lead of William Hunter, soon broke away from such 
 bonds, and for over half a century almost every distin- 
 guished anatomist had dissecting-rooms attached to his 
 private dwelling, where he and his pupils cultivated the 
 science. In 1770 William Hunter bought a lot in Great 
 Windmill Street, London, opposite the Haymarket, and 
 built on it a dwelling-house, an anatomical theatre, dis- 
 secting-rooms, and a museum. The lecture-room was 
 lighted from above, and the seats rose as in our own 
 amphitheatres. Here he lectured, assisted by his brother 
 John, by Hewson, and by Cruikshank, till his death, in 
 1783. Here he collected his splendid museum, now in 
 Glasgow, at a cost of ^100,000," and his brother John 
 began his own collection, which cost him before its com- 
 pletion ^7o,ooo, 3 and now forms the chief ornament of 
 the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. At Wil- 
 liam Hunter's death the anatomical school passed into 
 the hands of his nephew, Baillie, and then successively to 
 Cruikshank, Wilson, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir Charles 
 Bell, and Shaw, and finally to Mayo and Caesar Hawkins. 
 On Mayo's removal, in 1833, to University College Hos- 
 pital, this celebrated school came to an end. 4 But it had 
 
 1 " The Gold-headed Cane," pp. 95-8. 2 Brodie's Works, vol. i. p. 448. 
 
 3 Life of John Hunter, p. 72. 
 
 4 For these and other interesting particulars as to this celebrated school, 
 see " Letter from Sir B. Brodie to Dr. Craigee," in Appendix to Thom- 
 son's " Life of Cullen ;" Pichot's " Life and Labors of Sir C. Bell ;" Wm. 
 
 2
 
 ! 4 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 left its mark. Thousands of educated anatomists had 
 gone forth from its walls to practise all over Great Britain 
 and in this country. It furnished William Hunter's mu- 
 seum to Glasgow in 1807, John Hunter's to the Royal Col- 
 lege of Surgeons, London, and, later still, those of Wilson 
 and Sir Charles Bell went to ornament the museum of the 
 College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and that of Mayo to 
 University College, London. From it as a foster-mother, 
 too, along with the institution of new public schools 
 connected with the hospitals, many other private schools 
 sprang up, and presented the finest opportunities for the 
 diffusion of anatomical knowledge, so that in 1825-6, be- 
 sides the hospitals, there were no less than seven such 
 private schools of anatomy in London. 1 
 
 Next to England in point of time, Holland was the fore- 
 most in cultivating anatomy in its modern revival. 
 Ruysch, Swammerdam, Albinus, and Boerhaave, in the 
 last half of the seventeenth century, were not only the 
 anatomical lights of their pwn country, but also of all 
 Europe, and especially of Germany through Haller, and 
 of Scotland through the Monros. 
 
 I have already quoted the Edinburgh act of 1505, which 
 allowed of the annual dissection of a criminal, and also 
 the early experience of the first Monro, which shows how 
 rarely this was made available. The first Scotch anatomi- 
 cal theatre was built, and the first public demonstrations 
 given, in 1697. But it was not till 1720 that a regular 
 Professor was appointed. At that date Monro primus 
 was elected Professor, at the extraordinary salary of ^15 
 per annum! From this time till 1859, when Monro 
 the third died, the history of Edinburgh anatomy, 
 
 Hunter's Introd. Lects., Lect. 2d, and fol. papers; John Hunter's Life, 
 and Life of Hewson. 
 
 1 Lancet, 1825, pp. 26 et seq., gives a list of them all.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. ! 5 
 
 and that of this astonishing family, are almost identical. 
 True, John Bell and Knox, Charles Bell, Barclay, Innes, 
 and others, lectured in private schools ; but the Monros 
 held the sceptre. All of them lived to old age, Alexander 
 primus dying at seventy, Alexander secundus at eighty- 
 four, and Alexander tertius at eighty-six. All were pro- 
 fessors early in life ; at twenty-three, twenty-one, and 
 twenty-five respectively. All of them taught for long 
 periods: thirty-eight, fifty-four, and forty-eight years ; and 
 father, son, and grandson, they held the anatomical chair 
 in Edinburgh from 1720 till 1846, a period of one hundred 
 and twenty-six years ! x 
 
 In view of the fact that this our own city was only 
 founded in 1682, it shows unusual vigor and enterprise 
 that in 1751 less than seventy years after it was a wilder- 
 ness Dr. Cadwalader, a pupil of Cheselden, in London, 
 gave demonstrations in anatomy in Second Street above 
 Walnut. Eleven years later, Dr. Shippen, Jr., a pupil of 
 the Hunters, became a regular lecturer, and the founder 
 of the medical department of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania. The following is his announcement in the Penn- 
 sylvania Gazette of November 25, 1762: "Dr. Shippen's 
 anatomical lectures will begin to-morrow evening at six 
 o'clock, at his father's house, in Fourth Street. Tickets 
 for the course to be had of the doctor, at five pistoles each, 
 and any gentlemen who incline to see the subject prepared 
 for the lectures, and learn the art of dissecting, injections, 
 etc. , are to pay five pistoles more. " His Introductory was 
 delivered in the State House, and his class numbered 
 twelve. Three years later his house was mobbed for al- 
 leged violation of the church burying-ground, an assertion 
 which the doctor denied in a public announcement, and 
 
 1 Edinb. Journal, Oct. 1866. " Hist. Edinb. Anat. School."
 
 !6 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 at the same time declared that he had only dissected the 
 bodies of "suicides, executed felons, and now and then 
 one from the Potter's Field." ' 
 
 Dr. Shippen was not alone in this misfortune, for Monro 
 was mobbed in 1725, Macartney in Dublin many years 
 after, and Sir Astley Cooper and others have barely escaped 
 it, besides all the fights and riots in which students and 
 resurrectionists have been involved ; and all these troubles 
 point to a difficulty which from the dawn of practical 
 anatomy has always been felt. The problem how to obtain 
 a sufficient knowledge of anatomy and yet not to do vio- 
 lence to the feelings of the community, is one difficult of 
 solution. Had all anatomists been even so gallant as 
 Riolan, physician to Louis XIII., who dissected females 
 only on couches of germander, daphne, clematis, and 
 thyme, and entombed them in their floral beds, 3 yet the 
 difficulty would not have been overcome. The problem 
 was only solved by the anatomy acts which were passed 
 in England in 1832, 3 on the continent at various periods 
 some years before, and in this country by Massachusetts 
 in 1 83 1 4 and New York soon after. But these acts were 
 only obtained after the community had been driven to it, 
 not only by the repeated outrages to the public peace and 
 public feelings, but also by repeated crimes. 
 
 When a student with Sylvius in Paris, Vesalius had to 
 prowl around the places of execution and spoil the gallows 
 
 1 Carson's History Med. Dept. Univ. Penna., pp. 39, 40, 80-1, and Ap- 
 pendix, p. 217. For many other interesting facts in the early history of 
 anatomy in this country, see Prof. A. B. Crosby's address before the New 
 Hampshire Medical Society (1870). 
 
 a Riolan's " Enchiridium," quoted by Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 31. 
 
 3 For this act, known as the Warburton Act, see the Lancet, 1831-1832, 
 P- 7I3- 
 
 4 For copy, see Am. Journ. Med. Sci., vol. viii., 1831, p. 264.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. I 7 
 
 of its victims, and to retain his booty was sometimes 
 obliged to hide the bodies even in his own bed. 1 The 
 more enlightened, though cautious rulers and legislative 
 bodies, soon provided a partial supply. The first recog- 
 nized source, and until the present century the only legal 
 one, was from executed criminals an illustration of which 
 maybe seen in Hogarth's "Reward of Cruelty." But 
 Cortesius tells us about 1600, that so jealously guarded 
 was this privilege (in Messina) that in twenty-four years 
 he could but twice dissect a subject, and then under great 
 difficulties and in great haste. 2 What a contrast to the 
 five thousand now annually dissected in Paris alone ! 3 
 
 In England it was not till the reign of George II., in 
 1726," that #// criminals, instead of a few, were given for 
 dissection. This act was in force till 1832, but this source 
 of supply was insufficient even when executions were more 
 frequent than now. In all Great Britain, from 1805 to 
 1820, there were executed eleven hundred and fifty crim- 
 inals, or about seventy-seven annually ; and at the same 
 time there were over one thousand medical students in 
 London and nearly as many in Edinburgh. The result 
 was a natural one. The graveyards were rifled ; and, as 
 the demand was a permanent one, there arose a set of the 
 lowest possible villains who provided a permanent supply 
 the resurrectionists a race of men now happily almost 
 extinct. 
 
 At first but few in number, they soon rapidly increased, 
 till in 1828 there were in London over one hundred reg- 
 ular resurrectionists, 5 besides many occasional volunteers ; 
 
 1 Morley's Life of Jerome Cardan, vol. ii. p. u. 
 
 2 Hunter's Introd. Lect., pp. 41-2. 
 
 3 Hosp. and Surgeons of Paris, by F. C. Stewart, pp. 144-5. 
 * 9 George II. cap. 31, Lancet, 1834-5, vol. i. p. 356. 
 
 s Lancet, 1828-9, p. 793. 
 
 2*
 
 X 8 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 and their trade was so extensive, that if the police were 
 more than usually vigilant in Edinburgh or Dublin, they 
 would supply those more distant schools. Their skill was 
 such that no-obstacle was insuperable. The police watched 
 the grounds they were either bribed or made drunk; 
 relatives replaced them but a half-hour's unwary slum- 
 ber on the part of the weary watcher was enough for an 
 adept ; high walls were built they scaled them ; spring- 
 guns were set they sent women as mourners to the fu- 
 nerals, who discovered the position of the pegs ; a stone, an 
 old branch, a blade of grass was made to act as a detective 
 on a newly-made grave but the practised eye of a regular 
 would detect it in a moment, and replace it after the theft. 
 Such adepts were they that Sir Astley Cooper, in his evi- 
 dence before the Parliamentary Committee, declared that 
 no matter what the social position of any person in Eng- 
 land, he could obtain his body if he desired it ; x and such 
 villains were they, that, for a respectable price, they would 
 unhesitatingly make a subject of him, their best though 
 unwilling patron. The laws against their crimes, and the 
 vigilance of the police, had but one effect not to stop 
 the trade, but only to increase the cost of subjects. 3 The 
 ordinary charge was from ^7 to ^10 apiece, but often 
 this was largely increased. In 1826 the price was as high 
 as ;i6 to 22 ; and sometimes, when the police were 
 unusually vigilant, even ^30 $150 were paid for a single 
 subject ! 3 Their avarice was unbounded. Stimulated by 
 
 Life of Sir A. Cooper, vol. i. p. 407. 
 
 ? So imperfect was the supply, that a serious proposal was made to im- 
 port the subjects from France to Ireland. Lancet, 1826-7, p. 80. 
 
 3 Lancet, 1826-7, vol. ii. p. 80; and 1828-9, vo1 - i- PP- 434 and 563; 
 1837-8, vol. i. p. 589. Life of Sir A. Cooper, vol. i. pp. 361, 396, 397, 
 403. Some of the resurrectionists died rich. See A. Cooper's Life, vol. 
 i. pp. 416-18.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. ! 9 
 
 the jealousy and rivalry of the various schools, they 
 usually demanded a special fee at the beginning and the 
 end of every session in order to obtain their favor ; and 
 so necessary were they, that they were often paid as high 
 as ^50 to ;6o in these special fees; and in case any one 
 was imprisoned, his bail was paid, and often, also, an 
 allowance of ten shillings per week while in jail. In one 
 case recorded by Bransby Cooper, this was continued at 
 least during two years. 1 But when any subject was spe- 
 cially desired by an enthusiastic anatomist, then was their 
 carnival of extortion. In 1783, when 'O'Brien, the Irish 
 giant (whose skeleton, eight feet four inches high, now 
 adorns the Hunterian Museum of the College of Surgeons), 
 was in failing health, John Huntersent his servant Howison 
 to watch the disposition of the remains. This fact unfor- 
 tunately coming to the knowledge of the patient, in his 
 unbounded horror of the surgeon's scalpel he ordered that 
 after death his body should be watched day and night 
 till a leaden coffin could be made, in which he should be 
 taken to sea and buried there. Soon afterwards he died, 
 and the watchers were set. Howison, having discovered 
 the tavern where they refreshed themselves when off duty, 
 soon struck a bargain with one of them, that if his com- 
 panions would agree to it, the body should be stolen at 
 night, and for their consent the watchers were to receive 
 $o. The others, satisfied with all but the price, de- 
 manded ;ioo, which Hunter agreed to pay. Finding 
 him so eager, they soon made other difficulties, and 
 again and again increased the price until they had raised 
 it to ^500 ! Accordingly, the body was stolen at night, 
 conveyed in Hunter's own carriage to his dissecting- 
 room, and immediately prepared, but with such haste, 
 
 1 Sir A. Cooper's Life, pp. 360-2 and 369.
 
 20 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 for fear of interruption, that the bones could never be 
 properly whitened. 1 
 
 O'Brien's coffin was not the only one which contained 
 what might be called a " foreign body" when the clergy 
 performed the burial service. Such thefts became a regu- 
 lar part of the trade, and if a night intervened between 
 the finding of a body and the holding of a coroner's in- 
 quest, it was liable to disappear, and the resurrectionist 
 often attended the inquest to see the astonishment of the 
 jury. Sometimes they picked up cases of apoplexy in the 
 street, carried them to one of the hospitals as relatives, 
 claimed the body after death, and quickly assuaged their 
 grief with the guineas from the anatomical school of 
 another hospital. Patrick, one of the most celebrated 
 of the gang, for some months carried on successfully the 
 ruse of claiming relationship with dying men and women, 
 whose names he ascertained, in the various workhouses, 
 and his career was only cut short by the jealousy of a 
 rival named Murphy, who denounced him to the authori- 
 ties. But Murphy himself adopted a similar plan on 
 another occasion. Observing one day, while walking, a 
 neat .meeting-house with a paved burial-ground, in which 
 was a trap-door, he soon returned in a suit of solemn 
 black, seeking a quiet sanctuary for the remains of his 
 wife. Descending into the vault to select the place of 
 her repose, while the back of the sexton was turned he 
 quietly slipped the bolts of the trap-door, and that very 
 night, entering the vault by this means, he rifled every 
 body there of the teeth, which, as porcelain teeth were 
 then unknown, he sold to the dentists at a net gain 
 of ;6o. Once, a body stolen from the grave was sold to 
 
 1 Otley's Life of John Hunter, pp. 106-7, in Palmer's Ed. of Hunter's 
 Works, London, 1835.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 21 
 
 Lizars, in Edinburgh, and paid for ; was re-stolen from 
 Lizars's dissecting-room the same night and sold to Knox; 
 the scoundrels netting ^25 in all, and without the possible 
 fear of indictment, least of all for their second theft ! 
 
 Sometimes adventurous students carried the plunder 
 home in hackney-coaches, and this gave rise occasionally 
 to amusing adventures. On one occasion, the hackman, 
 aware of the illegal nature of his passenger's baggage, 
 having arrived opposite the Bow Street police headquar- 
 ters, thrust his head in at the window, and said to the 
 uneasy occupant, "The fare, sir, to the hospital is a 
 guinea, you know, unless you wish to be put down here." 
 "Quite right, my man, drive on," was the unhesitating 
 reply. 
 
 Along with the debasing qualities necessarily developed 
 by such an occupation, came also some of the more envi- 
 able qualities of body and mind. Thus, on one occasion, 
 when a party of medicals, headed by a noted Edinburgh 
 surgeon, were discovered in a city churchyard, the chief 
 actor laid hold of two large adults, just disinterred, and, 
 carrying one under each arm, escaped into the garden of 
 a private institution under the stimulating fire of blunder- 
 busses. But strategy and adroitness, combined with brute 
 force, were still more frequently called into play. A 
 country lad, whose disease was peculiar and his skeleton 
 much desired, had been buried in an exposed cemetery, 
 in a fishing village on the Firth of Forth, and watchers 
 were set. The resurrectionists, in full force, attempted 
 to bribe them, to outwit them, to entrap them, but all to 
 no avail. Weeks passed by, and the excitement was grad- 
 ually dying out, when, one evening, at dusk, two well- 
 dressed gentlemen, smoking their cigars, drove up in a 
 dog-cart to the little inn and alighted. The whip-hand 
 gentleman told the hostler that he expected a livery ser-
 
 22 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 
 
 vant to bring a parcel for him which was to be placed in 
 the box. In a short time the parcel was delivered, and 
 presently the two gentlemen returned and departed. The 
 sharp-eyed stable-boy could not help remarking that the 
 livery servant who brought the parcel "was deuced like 
 the off-side gentleman," and fancied he saw a bit of 
 scarlet lining under his brown overcoat. " Haud yer 
 tongue, Sandie," said his superior; "ye're aye seeing 
 farlies." While the gentlemen were driving away, the 
 watchers were approaching the grave, and, to their utmost 
 astonishment, it had been despoiled. Liston, the Edin- 
 burgh surgeon, and Crouch, the London resurrectionist, 
 needed but thirty minutes for such work, especially by 
 daylight. All the detectives were put upon the track, 
 and all the dissecting-rooms searched, but in vain. Years 
 afterwards, skeleton No. 3489, with the donor's name 
 attached, was added to the noblest anatomical collection 
 in Britain. 1 
 
 The bodies were generally left in the night in bags, 
 and this gave them occasionally a chance too good to be 
 lost. They bagged drunken men on the street and de- 
 livered them as subjects, sometimes to their great aston- 
 ishment, at others with their connivance. Mr. Clift, the 
 curator of the Hunterian Museum, was once thus waked 
 up while a student with John Hunter, and two bags de- 
 livered and paid for on the spot. The men had gone 
 but a few steps when Mr. Clift perceived the swindle, 
 and, though in his night-clothes, he ran after them, 
 collared the principal, and said to him, "You've left me 
 
 1 These details, and many others equally interesting and amusing, may 
 be found in the account of the Resurrectionists, in the Life of Sir Astley 
 Cooper, vol. i. pp. 334-448, and in Lonsdale's Life of Robert Knox, the 
 Anatomist, pp. 47-116. The comic side of the subject may be seen in 
 Hood's " Jack Hall" (Jackal), in his Whims and Oddities.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 23 
 
 a live man." "I know it," said the man, shaking off 
 his hold and escaping with the money; "you can kill 
 him when you want him." ' 
 
 But such a degrading occupation necessarily debased 
 the men to the level of any crime. The increasing 
 number of students leading to a growing demand for 
 subjects, and the increased vigilance of the police adding 
 to the difficulty of procuring them, the fears of medical 
 men that murder would be resorted to were soon realized. 
 In 1827 the University of Edinburgh, with nine hundred 
 students in its class, for the first time made dissection 
 compulsory, and thus greatly stimulated the demand. 
 London, Liverpool, and Dublin all in turn supplied the 
 want, but the prices obtained soon gave rise to the 
 horrible crimes of Bishop, 2 in London, and Wm. Burke, 
 in Edinburgh ; the latter, from the atrocity of his crimes, 
 being made eternally infamous by giving his name to the 
 crime of "Burking." 
 
 His trial, twenty-four hours long, one "of unexampled 
 length," said the judge, by curious contrast to our more 
 tardy justice, took place December 24, 1828. After his 
 conviction he made a confession of all his many crimes. 
 
 1 The late Prof. S. H. Dickson informed me that he had this not uncom- 
 mon "Joe Miller" of the present day from Mr. Clift personally. 
 
 2 I found this man's crimes alluded to several times in the Lancet, 
 1832-3, vol. i. pp. 244, 341, 568, when first preparing this lecture; but, 
 notwithstanding the most thorough search, I was unable to obtain any of 
 the particulars, save that he and a man named Williams murdered an 
 Italian boy, and were betrayed by Hill, the dissecting-room porter at 
 King's College. Since then, Dr. J. F. Clarke has published his "Auto- 
 biographical Recollections of the Profession." In this entertaining book 
 (pp. 100-104, and the Medical Times and Gazette, March n, 1871) a full 
 account of the facts is given. A curious bit of history is added in the 
 London letter of the Philadelphia Medical Times of May 17, 1873, P 
 524, showing how the murderers were detected by the sagacity of the 
 late Mr. Partridge.
 
 24 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 While he and his mistress, Helen McDougall, were lodging 
 with a man by the name of Hare, one of the lodgers died 
 owing Hare 4. They took the body to Dr. Knox, and 
 sold it for 7 -LOS. Finding it so profitable, the three 
 then proceeded to smother every available lodger who fell 
 into their hands, and, in the year that elapsed before their 
 detection, sixteen persons had thus been murdered. Burke 
 was executed Jan. 28, 1829, and, by order of the judge, 
 like Anton Probst in this very city, was publicly dissected. 1 
 His skeleton is in the Anatomical Museum of the Uni- 
 versity of Edinburgh, 2 and from his tanned skin John 
 Arthur, afterwards janitor to Prof. John Goodsir, had 
 made a tobacco-pouch, which he carried for many years 
 as a memento of the period when he first became con- 
 nected with the dissecting-room. 3 
 
 Such crimes called public attention to the imperative 
 necessity of a proper source of supply for dissecting ma- 
 terial. The Warburton anatomy bill accordingly was 
 enacted August i, 1832, giving all unclaimed bodies, 
 under proper regulations, to the various schools. This 
 has been the model for all subsequent acts, our own passed 
 but six years ago among them. For several years there 
 were loud complaints as to its operation, 4>ut experience 
 gradually removed its difficulties, and now it supplies all 
 the schools well, and at moderate prices. The price in 
 Edinburgh at present is $3 per part. 4 Our own act is 
 
 1 Lancet, 1828-9; his trial, pp. 424-31 ; his confession, pp. 667-8. 
 
 2 Lonsdale's Life of Knox, p. 76, note. This book contains a very 
 full account of the career of Burke and Hare, and their relations with 
 Knox. 
 
 3 Goodsir's Anatom. Memoirs, vol. i. p. 163, note. 
 
 4 Really the price of a "part" in Edinburgh is but 6.r. ($1.50), but the 
 body is divided into ten parts two each to the head, the thorax, and the 
 abdomen, and one to each of the four extremities. The body lies on its
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 25 
 
 suffering the same trial. Obstinacy and knavery are com- 
 bined to defeat it, but I do not doubt that in the end it 
 will gain the victory, and afford us an ample supply worthy 
 of a great medical centre. 
 
 Not only, however, do we have an immense advantage 
 in these days over the so-called good old times in the 
 facility of obtaining material, but also our means of pur- 
 suing practical anatomy are vastly more perfect and more 
 prolific. 
 
 In the Museum of the Royal College of Physicians the 
 curious observer will notice "six tablets or boards upon 
 which are spread the different nerves and blood-vessels, 
 carefully dissected," removed from the body and dried. 
 "In one of them the semilunar valves of the aorta are 
 distinctly to be seen." 1 Such are the, to us, wretched 
 preparations with which Harvey illustrated his lectures on 
 the circulation, and they were probably used before his 
 royal patron, when he demonstrated his wonderful dis- 
 covery to Charles I. He made them probably at Padua, 
 under the eye of Fabricius, the re-discoverer of the valves 
 in the veins. 2 If any one compares them with our splendid 
 preparations and models, how insignificant they seem ! 
 But they were among the first essays in a new art whose 
 benefits are still felt by all medical students. 
 
 back for three days to give time to have the thorax and abdomen opened 
 and examined, and the perineum dissected; then on its belly, for dissec- 
 tion of the muscles of the back and of the spinal cord. Each man then 
 soon removes his own extremity, and dissects it separately. 
 
 1 Harlan's Gannal's Hist, of Embalming, p. 258, and Gold-headed 
 Cane, pp. 127-8. Similar preparations are in the College of Surgeons, 
 purchased in Padua, by John Evelyn, made by Fabritius Bartoletus, then 
 Veslengius's assistant, and afterwards physician to the King of Poland. 
 
 2 Charles Etiennes (Carolus Stephanus) was the first who properly un- 
 derstood the valves in the veins. He speaks of them (in his " De Dissec. 
 
 3
 
 26 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 Carpi, 1 Etiennes, 2 and Eustachius, 3 in the sixteenth 
 century, and Malpighi, 4 Glisson, 5 and Willis, 6 in the 
 seventeenth, had used air, water, milk, ink, and other 
 colored fluids, with which to inject and trace the vessels. 
 In Holland, however, the first substantial progress was 
 made. DeGraaf, about 1668, improved the syringe, and 
 injected mercury into the spermatic vessels. 7 Swammer- 
 dam, Ruysch, and Albinus, however, really created and 
 diffused the knowledge of the art of injections. Swam- 
 
 part. Corp. Hum.," Paris, 1545, quoted in Hyrtl's Zerglied., p. 585, 
 note), as " apophyses membranarum" which obviate the danger from re- 
 gurgitation. This anticipates by two years Cananus, who, in 1547, when 
 Fabricius was but ten years old, demonstrated the valves in the azygos 
 veins. Aiken's Bibl. Med. " Harvey," p. 312, and Bayle et Thillaye, op. 
 cit., i. p. 234. 
 
 1 Prof., in Pavia and Bologna, 1502-1527. He is the first who speaks 
 of injections, when treating of the renal vessels "per syringam aqua 
 callida plenam." Isagoga brevis in Anat. Corp. Hum. Bonon. 1522, in 
 Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 585. 
 
 2 He blew air into the veins by a metal tube. Hyrtl, Zerglied., p 
 585. 
 
 3 Eustachius, says Portal (Hist, de 1' Anatomic, Paris, 1770, torn. i. p. 
 634), injected " fluids of various colors and densities." 
 
 * Malpighi used ink and other fluids assiduously, and by them made 
 various discoveries in the kidney and elsewhere. 
 
 5 Glisson injected the liver with ink. Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 586. Portal, 
 iii. 261. 
 
 6 Willis injected the brain with "aqua crocata." He discovered the 
 "Circle of Willis" by this means. The tubes of Bellini in the kidneys 
 were discovered in a similar manner. The pains anatomists took at that 
 time were even so great that a preparation by Hildanus (A.D. 1624) is 
 said to exist in Berne, which exhibits the entire venous system dissected 
 out by means of their distension by air, and the hundreds of ligatures 
 that it would require. Hyrtl, Zerglied., pp. 586-7. 
 
 7 Encyc. Brit., vol. ii. p. 761. Portal, Hist, de 1'Anat., torn. iii. pp. 220-1, 
 261. Strangely enough, Hyrtl ( Zerglied., p. 587), who is usually 
 So exact, attributes the first mercurial injections to Nuck, whose work 
 (Adenogr. Curios. Leydae, 1692) was published twenty-four years later 
 than De Graaf's " De Usu Siphonis."
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 27 
 
 merdam saw that in order to fulfil its purpose the material 
 used ought to be injected as a fluid and yet solidify in the 
 vessels, and not evaporate as water did. He first used 
 suet; in 1667 he substituted wax, and in 1672 he sent to 
 the Royal Society a preparation thus injected. 1 His suc- 
 cess was such that in his best preparations he filled even 
 the arteries of the skin of the face. Two years later he 
 gave up anatomy as impious, joined the party of a religious 
 fanatic, and died in 1680. 
 
 Before relinquishing his profession he made his method 
 public in Amsterdam, Paris, and London, and gave special 
 instruction to his friend and fellow-townsman, Ruysch, 
 who pushed the art so far that he was said to believe that 
 the body was almost wholly made up of vessels. 2 Leu- 
 wenhoeck, another citizen of Leyden, had fortunately 
 just at this time invented, or rather made really available, 
 the microscope, 3 and thus Ruysch was enabled not only 
 to inject finer vessels directly, but also to discover, as re- 
 sults of his injections, networks of vessels hitherto un- 
 suspected. 4 His first trials were made on the bodies of 
 
 1 Portal, Hist, de 1'Anat., Hi. 334. 
 
 2 This erroneous belief (totum corpus ex vasculis) was really held by 
 Ruysch and nearly all his contemporaries. "Antoine Ferrein," says 
 Sprengel (Hist, de la Med., torn. iv. p. 338), "was the only one who ad- 
 vocated the parenchyma of the organs against Ruysch and Malpighi." 
 It was long held by Boerhaave's school also. 
 
 3 Magnifying lenses of rock crystal were found in the palace of Nim- 
 roud, by Layard. The compound microscope was invented by Hans 
 Zansz, spectacle-maker, at Middleburg, Holland, in 1590. Encyc. Brit., 
 8th ed., art. " Microscope," p. 801. 
 
 4 He discovered the vasa vasorum, the bronchial arteries, the vessels of 
 the middle layer of the choroid, called the " Tunica Ruyschiana" (though 
 this was first accurately described by Zinn, in 1755), the finervessels in the 
 serous and synovial membranes, the pia and dura matres, the corpora 
 cavernosa, and many parenchymata. Hyrtl, Zerglied.,p. 594- Sprengel, 
 Hist, de la Med., torn. iv. pp. 144, 233, 277-8.
 
 28 EKRL Y HISTOR Y OF 
 
 infants, but finally, when, in 1666, Admiral Berkeley was 
 killed and his body captured in the memorable four days' 
 fight between the English and the Dutch fleets, Ruysch 
 successfully embalmed his body by order of the States 
 General, and sent it back to England with an almost nat- 
 ural appearance. 1 Such was his success, 3 says M. Fonte- 
 nelle, that he seemed not only to preserve men after death, 
 but rather to prolong their life. At the close of his long 
 career they remained perfectly preserved, with their orig- 
 inal softness, flexibility, and color. 
 
 In his museum, which was called the eighth wonder of 
 the world, the dittce and the utile were elegantly combined. 
 Flowers, ornamental shell-work, and rarities worthy a 
 royal cabinet were interspersed with skeletons, injections, 
 and other anatomical pieces, 3 and many of them, especially 
 the fcetal skeletons, were labelled with appropriate and in- 
 structive mottoes. Thus, one who did not attain to even 
 uterine maturity holds an inflated bladder aloft, and 
 teaches us the shortness of life in its motto, "Homo 
 Bulla," "Man but a bubble." Another holding a prep- 
 
 1 Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., vol. i. p. 528. Portal, Hist, de 1'Anat., torn, 
 iii. p. 262. So natural was one infant's body that Peter the Great is said 
 to have kissed it. 
 
 2 Hyrtl (Zerglied., p. 597) found the process described by J. Ch. Rieger 
 (Introd. in notitiam rerum natural, et artefact., etc. Hagse, 1743, 4to, 2 
 vols.) under "Animal" (vol. i.) and " Balsamus" (vol. ii. pp. 54-7). The 
 latter contains a copy of Ruysch's autograph directions as to his mode of 
 injection and preservation. The following are extracts: "Pro materie 
 ceracea sumendum sebitm, et quidem tempore hyemali simplex aestivo 
 tempore exiguum frustum cerce alba addendum. Liquefactse materise 
 additur cinnabaris factitise quantitas sufficiens, aut quantum vis, idque 
 movendo, donee bene permixta sit cinnabaris. Liquor meus est spiritus, e 
 vino, vel frumento confcctus, cui si addere velimus in destillatione manipu- 
 lum piperis iiigri, eo acrius penetrat per carnosa spartes." 
 
 3 Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit, vol. i. p. 529. The plates in his " The- 
 saurus Anatomicus," i.-vi., Amstel., 1701, in my own library, illustrate 
 these quaint but withal artistic arrangements.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 29 
 
 aration of the lymphatics showing their valves, which was 
 made twenty-five years before, and not long after their 
 first discovery by Aselius, in 1622, reminds you they are 
 "as difficult as beautiful." A third, a uterus containing 
 a foetus, hints at a questionable paternity : " Quo minime 
 credis gurgite piscis erit," "Fish may be found in least 
 suspected pools." A still-born child's motto, " Hsec 
 mihi prima dies, haec mihi summa fuit," "This my first 
 day was my last," reminds one of the laconic epitaph in 
 a similar case 
 
 " If I was so soon to be done for, 
 What was I ever begun for?" 
 
 And the head of a noted woman of Leyden, whose finger 
 points to the syphilitic perforations of her skull, has the 
 warning motto, " In similar waters similar fish are found." l 
 The museum was the admiration of all distinguished men 
 at home and abroad. Generals, ambassadors, princes, 
 and even kings delighted to visit it, and spend whole days 
 with its author. 2 Peter the Great, when in Holland, in 
 1 698, thus divided his time with Leuwenhoeck and Ruysch : 
 he attended the lectures of the latter, and became an 
 earnest student of medicine. He always carried a small 
 surgical case. He learned to draw teeth, to bleed, and 
 to dissect. So enthusiastic a pupil did he prove that he 
 always occupied the front seat, and during one of the lec- 
 tures he leaped up and was about to seize the scalpel the 
 master held. 3 The Czar's surgical operations, however, 
 did not prove so successful, for a Dutch merchant's wife 
 
 1 Ruysch, " Museum Anatomicum." An Appendix to his Opera Cra- 
 nia Anat. Med. Chirur., 4to, Amstel., 1721, pp. no, 158, 156, 173-4, an d 
 163 respectively. (In the Library of the College of Physicians.) 
 
 a Portal, Hist, de 1'Anat., torn. iii. p. 262. 
 
 3 Life of Peter the Great. London, 1832. 
 3*
 
 3 
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 whom he tapped died soon after, but the Czar, by way of 
 consolation, attended the funeral. On his return to Ley- 
 den, in 1717, he purchased Ruysch's museum for 30,000 
 florins, and sent it to St. Petersburg. Ruysch, though 
 seventy-nine years old, immediately went to work on 
 another. When his son, his efficient assistant, died, in 
 1727, he pressed his two daughters into the work, and so 
 diligent had he been that after his death, in 1731 (set. 
 ninety-three), his second museum was sold to Stanislaus, 
 King of Poland, for 20,000 florins. 1 
 
 1 These are the statements generally made as to their disposition on the 
 authority of Burggrseve, Precis de 1'Hist. de 1'Anat., Gand, 1840, pp. 295-6. 
 Hyrtl states (Zerglied., p. 592, note) that Heister asserts in the Preface to 
 Vater's Museum Anat. propr., Helmst., 1750, that the second museum was 
 bought by Fred. Aug. I., Elector of Saxony, from Ruysch's heirs, and 
 carried to Dresden. Fred. Aug. II. sent it to Wittenberg, and Vater, 
 Ruysch's pupil, then Professor of Anatomy in the University, made a 
 catalogue of it (Regii Mus. Anat. August Catal. Univ. Vittebergse, 1736). 
 Haller (Bibl. Anat., torn. ii. p. 43) says of this collection: " Aliquse partes 
 carp, hum. ex Ruyschii thesauris coemtse, aliqua undique collecta." 
 
 The question is often asked, "What became of Ruysch's prepara- 
 tions?" Conflicting statements are made, some stating they exist at the 
 present day in perfect preservation. (Bayle et Thillaye, vol. ii. p. 85, Par- 
 son's Anat. Prep., Pref., p. v.) I am glad, therefore, to be able to give so 
 valuable an opinion as that of Prof. Hyrtl, which being founded on per- 
 sonal observation is both interesting and decisive. He says (Zerglied., pp. 
 
 593-3). 
 
 " Ruysch's fame outlasted his collections, and the many preparations 
 which he expected to preserve, ' per liquorem suum balsamicum seternos 
 in annos 1 , no longer exist. In the Leyden Anatom. Museum Prof. Hal- 
 bertsma showed me a planta pedis which it is thought was injected by 
 Ruysch. In the Greifswald Museum I saw two others which, it is asserted, 
 are Ruysch's injections. They came from Vater's private collection (" Mus. 
 Anat. prop." above). The preparations sent to him by Ruysch (with 
 whom he was in uninterrupted relations) are especially noted as such. 
 After Vater's death the collection passed into the hands of his successor 
 Langguth.andat the dissolution of the University of Wittenberg was bought 
 by an apothecary for the glass ! By him a part vyas sold to Prof. Schultze, 
 in GrciLwakl, when travelling through Wittenberg. In the Museum at
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 31 
 
 What in Ruysch's time was a profound secret, is in our 
 day a common art. By the help of many workers in the 
 same field 1 our means of injection are greatly increased, 
 
 Prague, also, I found three small preparations an injected finger, a piece 
 of intestinal mucous membrane, and a child's hand whose mode of pres- 
 ervation so exactly corresponded with that in Ruysch's Thesaurus Ana- 
 tomicus that they are most likely the work of this masterhand, and were 
 probably among those collected by Du Toy, Prof. Anatomy at Prague in 
 the first half of the last century, in his scientific tour in the Netherlands. 
 Even in the Vienna Museum, according to Schwediauer, towards the end 
 of the last century some of Ruysch's preparations were to be found. 
 Those at Prague I have examined, and found them entirely worthless." 
 On page 595 he speaks of them as "scarcely to be recognized as injections 
 of the vessels," and of the " ruined specimens in Greifswald and Prague 
 . . . which through long continuance in spirit (liquor balsamicus) are 
 brittle, and by the development of the fatty acids are discolored and 
 reduced to a grayish-brown and crumbling pasty mass (Teig) extrava- 
 sation everywhere." 
 
 The Russian collection, howevrt', Hyrtl seems not to have examined, 
 and it is with pleasure, therefore, that I can state both on the authority of 
 a letter from E. Schuyler, Esq., of the U. S. Legation at St. Petersburg 
 (see the letter in the Phila. Med. Times, Feb. i, 1872, p. 173), and another 
 private letter from Prof. Pelechin, Assist. Prof. Surg. in the Imperial Med- 
 ical School of St. Petersburg, that Ruysch's cabinet forms at the present 
 time part of the Anatomical Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sci- 
 ences, and is in an excellent state of preservation, the injections being per- 
 fect. Unfortunately, a small piece of a foetal intestine sent me by Prof. 
 Pelechin for microscopical sections was destroyed by the carelessness of a 
 third person. It was perfectly preserved, and looked very like a success- 
 ful vascular injection. 
 
 1 Restricted as I was in time, I was unable to develop many points as I 
 would gladly have done had time allowed. The principal cultivators of 
 the art of injections since Ruysch are as follows : Alex. Monro primus 
 added the stopcock to the injecting tubes, and used double injections, viz., 
 glue to fill the finer vessels, followed by wax for the coarser. None of his 
 preparations remain even in Edinburgh. Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 599. 
 
 Lieberkuhn (Berlin, 1711-46) was the first whose injections really stood 
 the test of the microscope, and are worthy of comparison with the prepa- 
 rations made at present. Sixty-six of them are in the Vienna Museum, 
 each in the focus of one of his simple microscopes which are attached to 
 the slides. He first made the joint between the syringe and the arterial
 
 3 2 
 
 EARL Y HISTOR Y OF 
 
 and our results, though to the eye they do not reach those 
 popularly ascribed to Ruysch, yet for diffusing the knowl- 
 edge of anatomy among the profession, and for anatomi- 
 cal and microscopical research, they are vastly better. In- 
 jections of plaster of Paris, 1 wax, paint, glue, 2 ether, and 
 rubber every one can now make, and the wonderfully 
 beautiful results of Hyrtl, Gerlach, Beale, and Thiersch 
 are only equalled by the ingenuity of Chrzonszczewsky, 
 who has recently effected the physiological injection of 
 the bile-ducts by coloring the bile and then tying the 
 hepatic duct. Bidloo, in Amsterdam, in 1685, and Cow- 
 per and Nicholls, of Oxford, 3 a little later, added to our 
 
 tube air-tight by means of friction instead of a screw. The wings by 
 which it is now held were as yet unknown, and were replaced by a hook. 
 He used wax, resin, turpentine, and cinnabar. Hyrtl, op. cit., p. 602. 
 
 In the present century, Shaw's "cold paint injection" (see Parson's 
 Anat. Preps., pp. 2-3, and Horner's Pract. Anat., Introd., pp. xviii. and 
 xix., where this is attributed to Allan Ramsay) has been largely used. 
 Bowman's double cold injection by acetate of lead followed by chromate 
 of potash, both in solution, Voigt's solution of glue, Gerlach's of carmine, 
 Beale's of Prussian blue, etc., have all been admirable. No one has done 
 more to advance the art than Hyrtl himself, who was the first to make 
 preparations of two, three, and four different colored injections, and has 
 left no kingdom, family, or genus whose anatomy is not illustrated by his 
 splendid researches. No medical man should visit this city without 
 inspecting the splendid collection of his injected, and especially his cor- 
 roded, preparations, recently purchased (1874) by the College of Physi- 
 cians for the Mutter Museum. They are the most superb specimens of 
 anatomical preparations I have ever seen. 
 
 1 First used by Trew (Commerc. Liter. Noricum, 1732, p. 298), and 
 now in use generally in this country and in Berlin, while wax in various 
 forms and combinations is used in Edinburgh, London, Heidelberg, Paris, 
 Vienna, etc. 
 
 First used by P. S. Rouhault, Surgeon to the King of Sardinia, 1718. 
 Hyrtl, Zerglied., pp. 589-90. 
 
 3 Wm. Hunter (Introd. Lect., p. 56), and following him most other Eng- 
 lish writers (e.g., Gold-headed Cane, p. 129; Horner's Anat., Introd., pp. 
 xiv.-xv., note), give the sole credit of this beautiful invention to Prof.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 33 
 
 means of illustration by injecting the vessels and hollow 
 viscera with wax or metal, and then corroding or macerat- 
 ing the animal textures, leaving the injection as their per- 
 fect representative. Auzoux's splendid models have won 
 for him the cross of the Legion of Honor. 1 Suchet, about 
 1850, revived the Egyptian method of tanning, but, unfor- 
 tunately and wrongfully, kept the process a profound secret. 
 In 1867, at the Paris Exposition, in noble contrast to this 
 illiberal spirit, Brunetti, of Padua, explained to the Paris 
 Medical Congress, in the crowded amphitheatre of the 
 Ecole de Medecine, his method of tanning by which he 
 had made the astonishing preparations which he then ex- 
 hibited. For durability, preservation of form and struc- 
 ture, both anatomical and pathological, even to microscopic 
 exactness, they are unrivalled, and he was rewarded with 
 a special gold medal, as well deserved as was the applause 
 his liberal spirit elicited from an appreciative audience. 2 
 Still later (1873), Dr. Marini, of Naples, exhibited at the 
 
 Nicholls. Hyrtl, however, places the credit further back and of right with 
 Bidloo (Anat. Corp. Human., Amstel., 1685), who injected melted bismuth 
 into the lungs, and Cowper (The Anat. of Human Bodies, Oxford, 1697), 
 who used lead (Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 604). Possibly Nicholls was the first 
 thus to prepare the vessels. 
 
 1 Plastic models are now made by Auzoux with great beauty and exact- 
 ness, and the history of their development may be found hi the New Amer. 
 Cyc., first ed., vol. i.pp. 517-8, and vol.'ii. p. 409. In 1823, in the re-organi- 
 zation of the universities to get rid of the materialism of the French Revo- 
 lution, the old prejudices against dissection were revived. In consequence of 
 the difficulties thus thrown in the way of dissection, it occurred to Auzoux, 
 in 1825, to make models in papier-mache. In 1830 the invention was per- 
 fected, and Auzoux now employs from sixty to eighty hands in his manu- 
 factory, and supplies the world with his models (of which he makes about 
 two hundred), both in human, comparative, and vegetable anatomy. 
 
 2 See Med. News and Library, Jan. 1868. I have in my possession now 
 two specimens of tubercle and cirrhosis of the liver, kindly sent me by 
 Prof. Brunetti, which are witnesses to the excellence of his method. The 
 color is, of course, destroyed by the alcohol and the tanning.
 
 34 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 Vienna Exposition some anatomical preparations made 
 by some new methods (which he also wrongfully keeps 
 secret), which, it is asserted, after ten years, retain all 
 their original freshness and natural appearance even to 
 the fatty tissues. The body of Thalberg has been thus 
 preserved for the adornment of his widow's drawing-room. 1 
 
 Dissections having for their object such permanent prepa- 
 rations cannot be made in haste. They require consider- 
 able time. So too dissections for a series of lectures on 
 various systems, such as the muscular, the vascular, etc., 
 require that we shall be able to preserve the body unless 
 we go back to the short courses of bygone days. Thus, 
 in Edinburgh, in 1697, in the first course of public lectures, 
 as the felon's body by law had to be buried in ten days, 
 ten lectures were delivered on successive days by as many- 
 different lecturers, in which the entire subject was treated. 
 How hurried the course was we may judge, seeing that on 
 one day the brain, spinal cord, and all the nerves were fin- 
 ished, and on another, all of the five senses. 2 But when 
 we go back to Mondini in 1315, we find him the embodi- 
 ment of brevity, for he completed the anatomy, physi- 
 ology, and surgery of the entire body in five lectures. 
 
 The first example we have of the use of preservative 
 
 1 Med. News and Library, Nov. 1873, p. 183 ; Med. Times and Gaz., 
 Sept. 6, 1873. 
 
 a Edin. Med. Journal, Oct. 1866, p. 294. The meagre number of lec- 
 tures on important branches in later times also is striking. Thus, Mr. 
 Bronfield, of St. George's Hospital, delivered but thirty-six lectures on 
 anatomy and surgery, Dr. Nicholls, William Hunter's teacher, lectured on 
 anatomy, physiology, pathology, and midwifery in thirty-nine, and Mr. 
 Nource, at St. Bartholomew's, embraced " totam rem anatomicam" in 
 twenty-three lectures. (John Hunter's Life, p. 4, note.) William Hunter 
 enlarged the number of lectures on anatomy alone to eighty-six, about 
 the present length of such a course.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 35 
 
 means is in the now familiar Egyptian mummies. Be- 
 lieving in the immortality of the soul, and that they could 
 retain the soul within the body so long as its form was 
 preserved entire, it was very natural that the Egyptians 
 should endeavor to do by art what nature showed them to 
 be possible in the desiccated mummies of the deserts around 
 them. Various methods were adopted, of which we have a 
 short description in the embalming of Jacob's body in Gen- 
 esis, 1 and at a greater length in Herodotus and Diodorus 
 Siculus. Three principal modes existed, differing chiefly 
 in expense. The cheapest was available to even the poor, 
 the second cost about $450, and the third about $1250." 
 In the last, having removed the brain and its membranes 
 through the nostrils, by breaking through the ethmoid bone 
 with a curved piece of iron, they made an incision of five 
 inches in the loins, removed the thoracic and abdominal 
 viscera, cleansed them with palm wine and aromatics, and, 
 after a prayer by the priest that all the sins of eating and of 
 drinking might be forgiven, cast them into the river. 3 The 
 abdomen was next filled with every sort of spicery except 
 frankincense, and the body placed for forty days in natrum, 
 an impure carbonate of soda. The heart embalmed apart, 
 having been placed between the thighs, the whole body 
 was then wrapped in cere-cloths with all the exactness of 
 our modern spiral and reverse bandages, and sealed up 
 with wax or bitumen, 4 and in some cases even gold was 
 used. 5 Bitumen in many instances was used in the body 
 
 1 Gen. 1. 2, 3. 
 
 2 Rawlinson's Herod., vol. ii. pp. 119, 120, and notes. 
 
 3 Pettigrew's Hist, of Egyptian Mummies, London, 1834, p. 58. 
 
 4 Rawlinson's Herodotus Hist., ii. $ 136, and Diodorus Siculus, Bk. I. 
 vol. i. p. 102, xcii. 
 
 5 One was found in Siberia, wrapped in forty pounds of gold. Petti- 
 grew, op. cit., p. 65.
 
 3 6 EARL Y HISTOR Y OF 
 
 itself. In case the usual means were wanting, honey was 
 used as the sole preservative, as in the case of Alexander 
 the Great. 1 Some seem to have been preserved by tan- 
 ning, and then enveloped in wax. In fact, the very name 
 of mummy 2 is supposed to be derived from the Arabic 
 "miimmia," from "mum," "wax." 3 
 
 1 Statius, lib. Hi., Carm. ii., v. 117. Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 86. King 
 Aristobulus' body was similarly preserved. Josephus , Antiq. , lib. xiv. c. vii. 
 
 2 Rawlinson's Herod., vol. ii. p. 122, note. 
 
 3 William Hunter, at the close of each session, usually devoted one lec- 
 ture to teaching his students how to make preparations, and described also 
 a process in imitation of the Egyptian method, which he had put in use. 
 In the case of the wife of Martin Van Butchell (whose body is now in the 
 Royal College of Surgeons) his success was very good, and her husband's 
 own account of it is such a curious document that I give it below. Not 
 satisfied with preserving this treasure, he soon solaced himself with a 
 second wife : 
 
 " 14 Jan. 1775. At 2\ this morning my wife died. At 8 this morning 
 the statuary took off her face in plaster. At half-past 2 this afternoon Mr. 
 Cruikshank injected at the crural arteries, 5 pints of oil of turpentine mixed 
 with Venice turpentine and vermilion. 
 
 " i$th. At 9 this morning Dr. Hunter and Mr. C. began to open and 
 embalm the body of my wife. Her diseases were a large empyema in the 
 left lung (which would not receive any air) accompanied with pleurisy 
 and pneumonia and much adhesion ; the right lung was beginning also to 
 decay, and had some pus in it. The spleen hard and much contracted ; 
 the liver diseased called Rata Malpighi. The stomach very sound. The 
 kidneys, uterus, bladder, and intestines in good order. Injected at the 
 large arteries, oil of turpentine mixed with camphored spirits, i.e. 10 oz. 
 camphor to a quart spirits, so as to make the whole vascular system tur- 
 gid ; put into the belly part 6 Ibs. rosin powder, 3 Ibs. camphor powder, 
 and 3 Ibs. of nitre powder mixed with rectified spirits. 
 
 " I7th. I opened the abdomen and put in the remainder of powders 
 and added 4 Ibs. rosin, 3 Ibs. nitre, and i Ib. camphor . . . 
 
 " i8th. Dr. H. and Mr. C. came at 9 this morning and put my wife into 
 the box, on and in 130 Ibs. wt. of Paris plaster, at 18 pence a bag. I put 
 between the thighs, 3 arquebusade bottles, one full of camphored spirits 
 very rich of the gum, one containing 8 oz. of oil of rosemary, and in the 
 other 2 oz. lavender.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 37 
 
 The mummies have been put to some curious uses. The 
 Egyptians gave them as pledges for the repayment of bor- 
 rowed money, 1 the "hypothecated bonds" of the Alex- 
 andrian "Bourse." But in the middle ages they were 
 still more curiously employed, as potent remedies in falls, 
 bruises, and other external injuries. "Mummy," says 
 Sir Francis Bacon, "hath great force in staunching of 
 blood, which may be ascribed to the mixture of balms that 
 are glutinous." Francis I. always carried with him a little 
 packet of powdered mummy and rhubarb for falls and 
 other accidents. 2 So great was the demand that as the 
 real article was difficult to obtain, like Waterloo bullets, 
 they were manufactured at enormous profits by avaricious 
 Jews in Alexandria. Ambroise Pare, who was born in 
 1509, in his book on the mummy, 3 states that having 
 
 " igth. I closed up the joints of the box lid and glasses with Paris 
 plaster mixed with gum water and spirits of wine. 
 
 " 25th. Dr. H. came with Sir Thomas Wynn and lady. 
 
 " Feb. 5. " Dr. H. came with 2 ladies at 10 this evening. 
 
 " 7th. Dr. H. came with Sir Jno. Pringle, Dr. Herberden, Dr. Watson, 
 and about 12 more Fellows of the Royal Society. 
 
 " nth. Dr. H. came with Dr. Solander, Dr. , Mr. Banks, and 
 
 another gentleman. I unlocked the glasses to clean the face with spirits 
 of wme and oil of lavender. 
 
 " I2th. - Dr. H. came to look at the neck and shoulders. 
 
 " I3th. I put 4 oz. camphored spirits into the box at the sides and 
 neck, and 6 Ibs. of plaster. 
 
 ' ' i6th. I put 4 oz. oil of lavender, 4 oz. oil of rosemary, and i oz. 
 oil of chamomile flowers (the last cost 4 shillings) on sides of the face, 
 and 3 oz. of very dry powder of chamomile flowers, on the breast, neck, 
 and shoulders." 
 
 The body resembles a Guanche mummy rather than an Egyptian, and 
 is, properly speaking, a desiccated rather than an embalmed body. Petti- 
 grew, op. cit., p. 258, note. 
 
 1 Pcttigrew, op. cit., pp. 16 and 17. 
 
 3 Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 9. Even to-day they are used by the Arabs 
 mixed with honey (p. 12.). 
 
 3 The Workes of that famous Chirurgion, Ambroise Pare, London, 
 4
 
 38 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 learned this fact from his friend De la Fontaine, who had 
 observed it in Egypt, and also having never seen any good 
 effect from the remedy, .he did all in his power to dis- 
 courage its use both in his own practice and also in all his 
 consultations. He gives us too, in his book on embalm- 
 ing, a method he himself used for the preservation of a 
 body, with very gratifying success, and as it is the earliest 
 of the more modern methods, I will give its quaint and 
 curious details and results. 1 
 
 "The body which is to be embalmed for a long con- 
 tinuance must first of all be emboweled, keeping the heart 
 apart that it bee embalmed as the kinsfolkes may thinke fit. 
 Also the braine, the scull being divided with a saw, shall 
 be taken out. Then shall you make deepe incisions 
 alongst the armes, thighes, legges, backe, loynes, and but- 
 tockes, especially where the greater veines and arteries 
 runne, first, that by these meanes the blood may be pressed 
 forth, which otherwise would putrifie, . . . and then that 
 there may be space to put in the aromaticke powders. The 
 whole body shall be washed over with a sponge dipped in 
 aqua vitae and strong vinegar, wherein shall be boiled 
 wormewood, aloes, coloquintida, common salt and alum. 
 Then these incisions and all the passages and open places 
 of the body and the three bellys shall be stuffed with the 
 following spices grossely powdered : R. Pulv. rosar., 
 chamomil. melil. balsam, menthae, aneth. saluise, lauend. 
 rosism. maioram. thymi, absinthii, cyperi, calami aro- 
 matici, gentianae, ireos flor. assas odoratae, caryophyll. 
 nucis moschatae, cinnamomi, styracis, calamitae, benioini, 
 myrrhre, aloes, santal. (with exquisite indefiniteness), quod 
 
 1649, p. 332. I cannot refrain from giving the capital pun on his name 
 in the motto which is under his portrait in the frontispiece. " Humanam 
 Ambrosii verehaec pictura Parasi, effigiem, sed opus continet ambrosiam." 
 1 Op. cit., pp. 1130-2. 
 
 I
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 39 
 
 sufficit. Let the incisions be sowed up, and forthwith let 
 the whole body be anointed with turpentine dissolved with 
 oyle of roses and chamomile. Then wrap it in linen cloath 
 and ceare cloaths. I put in mind hereby, that so the em- 
 balming may become more durable, to steepe the bodys 
 in a woodden tubbe filled with strong vinegar and the 
 decoction of aromaticke bitter things, as aloes, rue, colo- 
 quintida, and wormwoode, and there keep them for twenty 
 days, pouring in thereunto eleven or twelve pints of aqua 
 vitsei ' ' Alcohol is the real means, you will observe. And 
 now for the result. "I have at home the body of one 
 that was hanged, which I begged of the sheriff, embalmed 
 after this manner, which remains sound for more than 
 twenty-five yeeres, so that you may tell all the muscles of 
 the right side (which I have cut up even to their heads, 
 and plucked them from those that are next them for dis- 
 tinctions sake, that so I may view them with my eyes and 
 handle them with my hands, that by renuing my memory 
 I may worke more certainely and surely when as I have 
 any more curious operations to be performed). The left 
 side remains whole, and the lungs, heart, diaphragma, 
 stomache, spleene, kidneyes, beard, haires, yea, and the 
 nailes, which being pared (he adds with charming naivete), 
 I have often observed to grow again to their former big- 
 nesse." 
 
 A century later than Pare, Ruysch, as we have seen, was 
 said to have the most astonishing means for the preser- 
 vation of his subjects. But we must make large allowances 
 for the natural exaggeration of the extremely happy results 
 of what was then a new art. Nor should we be the better 
 off did we possess the secret of his contemporary De Bilsius, 
 a noted charlatan of Rotterdam, whose boasted method, 
 Haller says, was bought by the States of Brabant for the 
 enormous sum of 122,000 florins, or more than four times
 
 4 o EARL Y HISTOR Y OF 
 
 the price of Ruysch's first museum. The bodies he pre- 
 tended to embalm for the University of Louvain were soon 
 destroyed, and, apparently in proof of the inefficacy of his 
 own method, so foul was the air of the rooms in which he 
 prepared his subjects, that it was said to have been the 
 cause of the consumption to which he fell a victim. 1 
 
 The traveller in Europe to-day finds a number of speci- 
 mens of bodies preserved either by art or by nature, curious 
 alike to the antiquary and the anatomist. In Milan is the 
 body of St. Carlo Borromeo, who died in 1584; on the 
 Rhine, near Bonn, in an old monastery, lie over a score 
 of monks in cassock and cowl, placed in its vault before 
 Columbus had discovered the New World ; and again, in 
 the church of St. Thomas, at Strasburg, are seen the bodies 
 of the Count of Nassau and his daughter, over six hundred 
 years old. The skin is yellow and shrivelled, but perfectly 
 preserved ; the small clothes of the father have been re- 
 placed by imitations, but the clothes of the daughter are 
 intact. The lace on her blue gown is perfect, bunches of 
 silver flowers adorn her hair, jewels lie on her breast, and 
 even diamond rings clasp the shrivelled fingers as in 
 mockery of death. All of these have been probably pre- 
 served by the aluminous soils in which they were placed. 
 Cold has done the same work for the ghastly remains in 
 the morgue on top of the great St. Bernard, while desic- 
 cation has shrivelled both features and limbs into con- 
 tortions worthy of purgatory. 
 
 The largest collection of bodies preserved, not by 
 nature, but by art, and by the simplest method, namely, 
 that of desiccation by means of artificial heat, is in the 
 monastery of the Capuchins, near Palermo. All its in- 
 mates who have died for the last two hundred and fifty 
 
 Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 84-5.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY, 41 
 
 years, more than two thousand in number, stand upright 
 in ghostly companionship in the niches of its subterra- 
 nean galleries. 1 
 
 None of these means, however, would do for dissection. 
 For practical anatomy the introduction of alcohol 2 with- 
 out the numerous drugs that Pare used, was the first 
 efficient means which rendered patient and prolonged 
 dissection available, and Cuvier points to its use as an 
 indispensable step in the progress of comparative anat- 
 omy, as it rendered possible the preservation of animals 
 while being transported from distant parts of the world. 
 Since then chemistry has added largely to our means for 
 such purposes, such as chloride of zinc, arsenic, salt, and 
 nitre, hyposulphite of soda, acetate of alumina, and other 
 means for special purposes. In Berlin, Heidelberg, Vienna, 
 etc., alcohol is used where a prolonged dissection is neces- 
 sary ; but for the ordinary dissections of students nothing 
 whatever is used. The greater number of unclaimed 
 bodies, arising from overcrowding, poverty, and want, 
 so amply supplies the anatomical schools that they dissect 
 without any antiseptic, and remove the subjects the 
 moment decomposition sets in. In Vienna no part is 
 allowed to remain on the tables more than seven days. 
 But' while such an arrangement would be disastrous here, 
 
 1 The reader who is curious in such things will find many other such 
 instances described in full in Pettigrew's Hist. Egypt. Mummies, and in 
 Harlan's Gannal's Hist, of Embalming, 8vo, Philada., 1840. Among 
 them are not only full accounts of the Egyptian mummies, but also of 
 those of Peru, Mexico, the Guanches, etc., and of the bodies preserved 
 at Bordeaux, Toulouse, etc. Dr. A. B. Granville's " Essay on Egyptian 
 Mummies," Phil. Trans., 1825, p. 969 efsey.,a\so contains some interest- 
 ing facts, including a case of ovarian disease discovered in a mummy. 
 
 a Abucasis in the twelfth century first showed how to get spirits from 
 wine. Raymond Lully (thirteenth century) first dehydrated it by carb. 
 potass. Gmelin's Handb. Chem., vol. viii. p. 194.
 
 42 EARLY HISTORY OF 
 
 it works well there by reason of their different mode of 
 study. The dissecting-rooms are only open from twelve 
 noon to seven P.M., and from October to April; but 
 during the first two years the student does but little 
 beyond dissection and the study of anatomy. 
 
 In this country, where the supply of material never 
 equals the demand, especially in the winter, we are com- 
 pelled to preserve them for months. The chloride of 
 zinc and arsenic are the favorite means. 1 
 
 By such a hasty review as I have now given of the 
 imperfect methods, the meagre advantages, and the re- 
 stricted opportunities for the cultivation of practical 
 anatomy by former students of medicine, we can appre- 
 ciate how vastly better off we of to-day are from every 
 point of view. The good old times are the myths of 
 croakers with which they would repress the progressive 
 spirit of the present. Never has anatomy made so rapid 
 and so substantial progress as in the present century, and 
 never has it in this country attained such a point as it 
 occupies to-day. Yet we lack much. Our very wealth 
 of opportunities threatens us with a Capuan repose, unless 
 the stirring examples of the great men who have pre- 
 ceded us stimulate us to exertion. Tertullian says that 
 Herophilus, in Alexandria, dissected over six hundred 
 bodies. 2 Berengarius, of Carpi, the contemporary of 
 Vesalius, dissected over one hundred. 3 Haller, who died 
 
 1 For some researches of my own with a new preservative hydrate of 
 chloral see the Philadelphia Medical Times, March 21, 1874, " On the 
 Anatomical, Pathological, and Surgical Uses of Chloral." My subsequent 
 experiments have fully borne out the conclusions there stated. They will 
 be given at length in a subsequent paper. 
 
 2 Encyc. Brit., vol. ii. p. 751. Wm. Hunter, Introd. Lect., p. 19. 
 
 3 Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., vol. i. p. 244.
 
 PRACTICAL ANATOMY. 43 
 
 a century ago, says that with his own hand he had dis- 
 sected over four hundred in seventeen years ; x and that 
 almost unequalled worker, John Hunter, when asked at 
 the trial of Captain Donellan, in 1781, whether he had 
 not dissected more than any other man in Europe, re- 
 plied, "In the last thirty-three years I have dissected 
 some thousands of bodies." 2 It seems an exaggeration; 
 but remember his habits. For thirty years his working- 
 day consisted of nineteen to twenty hours. He rose at 
 lour or rive o'clock, and always dissected till his breakfast 
 hour, at nine, and after his labors in pmrJJre and the 
 hospital- wank were aver, his labors in the dissect 
 room re-comrhehced, and he never left it "till midnight 
 even later. When any of you, then, visit the Hunterian 
 Museum, in London, remember what it cost him in 
 money, and, what is more, the unceasing labor of a long 
 life. Such diligence has sometimes, alas ! cost the world 
 more than money or toil. It cost the life of Bichat, who 
 died at barely thirty-one from constant confinement in 
 his dissecting-rooms. "Bichat," wrote Corvisart to the 
 First Consul, "has just died on a field of battle that 
 counts more than one victim. No man in so short a 
 time has done so much and so well." 3 
 
 Joining diligent work to the unequalled opportunities 
 that we now have, the laborers in the vast field of medi- 
 cine, in whatever department they toil, will meet with a 
 reward never before equalled. The future opens to the 
 active worker the brightest prospects. Happy will he be 
 who knows how to avail himself of its advantages ! 
 
 1 Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., vol. ii. p. 715. 2 Life, vol. i. p. 134. 
 
 3 Bichat sur la Vie et la Mort, p. xiv.
 
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