"'Sleep on, dear youth; this does not mean that you are indolent, or that I am dull; it is the partial coma of commencing asphyxia.'
"You will see extensive apartments destined for the practical study of chemistry and of physiology. But these branches are no longer studied as of old, by merely listening to lectures. The student must himself perform the analyses which he used to hear about. He must not be poisoned at his work, and therefore he will require a spacious and well-ventilated room to work in. You read but the other day of an esteemed fellow-citizen who died from inhaling the vapors of a broken demijohn of a corrosive acid. You will be glad to see that every precaution is taken to insure the safety and health of our students.
"Physiology, as now studied, involves the use of much delicate and complex machinery. You may remember the balance at which Sanctorius sat at his meals, so that when he had taken in a certain number of ounces the lightened table and more heavily weighted philosopher gently parted company. You have heard, perhaps, of Pettenkofer's chamber, by means of which all the living processes of a human body are made to declare the total consumption and product during a given period. Food and fuel supplied; work done. Never was the human body as a machine so understood, never did it give such an account of itself, as it now does in the legible handwriting of the cardiograph, the sphygmograph, the myograph, and other self-registering contrivances, with all of which the student of to-day is expected to be practically familiar.
... Among the various apartments destined to special uses one will be sure to rivet your attention; namely, the Anthropotomic Laboratory, known to plainer speech as the dissecting room. The most difficult work of a medical school is the proper teaching of practical anatomy. The pursuit of that vitally essential branch of professional knowledge has always been in the face of numerous obstacles. Superstition has arrayed all her hobgoblins against it. Popular prejudice has made the study embarrassing and even dangerous to those engaged in it. The surgical student was prohibited from obtaining the knowledge required in his profession, and the surgeon was visited with crushing penalties for want of that necessary knowledge. Nothing is easier than to excite the odium of the ignorant against this branch of instruction and those who are engaged in it. It is the duty and interest of all intelligent members of the community to defend the anatomist and his place of labor against such appeals to ignorant passion as will interfere with this part of medical education, above all, against such inflammatory representations as may be expected to lead to mid-day mobs or midnight incendiarism.
"The enlightened legislation of Massachusetts has long sanctioned the practice of dissection, and provided means for supporting the needs of anatomical instruction, which managed with decent privacy and discretion, have served the beneficent purpose intended by the wise and humane law-givers, without doing wrong to those natural sensibilities which are always to be respected.
"During the long period in which I have been a professor of anatomy in this medical school, I have had abundant opportunities of knowing the zeal, the industry, the intelligence, the good order and propriety with which this practical department has been carried on. The labors superintended by the demonstrator and his assistants are in their nature repulsive, and not free from risk of diseases, though in both these respects modern chemistry has introduced great ameliorations. The student is breathing an air which unused senses would find insufferable. He has tasks to perform which the chambermaid and the stable-boy would shrink from undertaking. We cannot wonder that the sensitive Rousseau could not endure the atmosphere of the room in which he had began a course of anatomical study. But we know that the great painters, Michael Angelo, Leonardo and Raphael must have witnessed many careful dissections; and what they endured for art our students can endure for science and humanity.
"Among the large number of students who have worked in the department of which I am speaking during my long term of service—nearly two thousand are on the catalogue as students—there must have been some who were thoughtless, careless, unmindful of the proprieties. Something must be pardoned to the hardening effect of habit. Something must be forgiven to the light-heartedness of youth, which shows itself in scenes that would sadden and solemnize the unseasoned visitor. Even youthful womanhood has been known to forget itself in the midst of solemn surroundings. I well remember the complaint of Willis, a lover of the gentle sex, and not likely to have told a lie against a charming young person; I quote from my rusty memory, but I believe correctly:
She trifled! ay, that angel maid,
She trifled where the dead was laid.