THE ANATOMICAL MUSEUM.
The Anatomical Museum, built in 1875-6 from the design of Mr. J. M‘Curdy, for a long time architect to the College, is placed some seventy feet to the north of the Medical School, has a façade of 150 feet looking west, and a depth of forty-five feet. It is constructed of cut granite, without ornament or special features. Two doors and nine windows on the ground floor are surmounted by eleven windows on the upper story, all square, simple, solid, and harmonious. In this building are found the Museum collections both of Anatomy and of Natural History, and on the ground floor is the Anthropometric Laboratory, where measurements and records are taken on a somewhat more extended plan than that introduced by Captain Francis Galton at South Kensington. And a metric system of notation has been adopted similar to that in use on the Continent of Europe, especially in Paris, and lately introduced into the Anthropometric Department of the Military Medical School at Washington.
THE DISSECTING ROOM.
The Anatomical School presents the great advantage of having all its Lecture Rooms and Laboratories on the ground floor.
The Dissecting Room is large, well lighted, and well ventilated—so spacious and so well arranged that three hundred students can work at the same time without inconvenience. It is in every respect well suited for the work that is carried on, and presents none of that dinginess so generally characteristic of rooms of the kind. It is lighted by the electric light. The floor is of oak parquet. Round the walls are a series of cases, in which are placed permanent typical specimens, which are largely used by the students. Every inch of wall space above these cases is made use of for framed plates and diagrams appropriate to the subjects, and in the centre of the room on lofty pedestals stand two statues, the Venus of Milo and the Boxer, bearing witness to the fact that Anatomy has artistic as well as medical aspects.
The Bone Room and the Lecture Theatre are entered directly from the Dissecting Room. The Bone Room is a lofty room surrounded by a gallery. On the floor, osteological specimens are arranged in revolving cases on long narrow tables. Few anatomical departments can boast of so numerous and so varied an assortment of teaching preparations. The gallery is chiefly devoted to specimens which bear upon the applications of anatomy to the practice of medicine. It is here also that are displayed (1) the large series of models prepared in the department to illustrate cerebral growth and the cranio-cerebral topography of the child and the adult; (2) the series of models representing the anatomy of inguinal hernia, also prepared in the department; (3) the mesial sections of the four anthropoid apes—gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon—preparations which are unique. The Theatre is capable of seating 400 students. It is not handsome; but it is comfortable and, most important of all, its acoustic property admirably well adapted for the purpose for which it was designed. There are also a Museum of Surgical and Medical Pathology, and one of Materia Medica.