The Monthly Review of Dental Surgery, No. VIII. October, 1880. Vol. I. / The Journal of the British Dental Association

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
“I think I am not overstating the case when I say that, in the two years (or less than two years) which the medical student devotes to studies other than clinical, 60 or 70 per cent. of his time—in some cases even more—is spent on the study of topographical anatomy. That study may be regarded in two lights—as a discipline, and as practical useful knowledge. The late Dr. Parkes, in a remarkable introductory address which he delivered at University College, London, many years ago, insisted most strongly that its value as a discipline was far higher and more precious than its direct utility; and I imagine that the more one reflects on the matter, the more clearly this will appear. The details of topographical anatomy have this peculiar feature, that, though they can only be learnt with infinite pains and labour, unlike other things hard to learn, they vanish and flee away with the greatest ease. I would confidently appeal to my audience of practical men, how much of the huge mass of minute facts, which in their youth they gathered with so much toil, remained fresh in their minds two years after they passed the portals of the College; and how much now remains to them beyond a general view of the parts of the human frame, and a somewhat more special knowledge of particular regions, their acquaintance with which has been maintained by more or less frequent operations. I would confidently ask them what is the ratio, in terms of money or any other value, which the time spent in those early anatomical struggles—say over the details of the forearm—bears to the amount of that knowledge remaining after twenty, or ten, or even five years of active practice, or to the actual use to which that knowledge has been put.
“No, it is as a discipline, and not for its practical utility, that anatomy has been so useful; and this, indeed, may frequently be recognised in the questions set at examinations. When the candidate is expected to describe, within the error of a few millimètres , the structures traversed by a bayonet thrust obliquely through the neck, or is invited to reproduce written photographs no less exact of the parts which, from skin to skin, underlie a triangle or quadrangle drawn in ink on the front or back of the thigh, it is clear that the examiner has in view, not the needs of practical life, but an easy means of testing the proficiency of the student in mnemonic gymnastics. Of the value of anatomy as a discipline, there can be no doubt. In past years, it has served as the chief culture of the medical student—as the chief means by which the rough material coming up to our great medical schools were trained to habits of accuracy, of exactness, of patient careful observation; and their memories strengthened by exercise for the subsequent strain which would have to be put upon them by more strictly professional learning. In this aspect, the very sterility of the subject was a virtue. The mere fact that the separate details seemed to hang loosely, isolated in mental space, held together by no theory, by no ideas, inasmuch as it made the learning a harder task, increased its disciplinary value. Most wisely did the leaders of our profession insist that no trouble or expense should be spared to afford the neophyte this preparatory scientific training; and that, as far as examinations and the like can go, no pains should be spared to compel him to avail himself of the opportunities offered. Indeed, viewed as a branch of education, the machinery of anatomical instruction has for many years past not been equalled by any.”