SURGICAL LECTURES AND DEMONSTRATIONS.
There are many references throughout the books to the Lectures and Demonstrations of Anatomy at our Hall, as well as indications that from the period of Incorporation (1462), if not earlier, the Company took care to provide for the professional education of its members and apprentices, and to increase their proficiency in Surgical science.
The initial letter T is reduced from one in the Audit Book, 1612–13.
In addition to the Examiners in Surgery (who though not necessarily members of the Court of Assistants were often consulted by the Masters or Governors) there were chosen “Masters and Stewards of the Anatomy,” generally two Masters and two Stewards, on whom devolved the duty of conducting the Demonstrations, and arranging for the Dinners which invariably followed. The exact duties of these officials are not at all times clearly defined, though elsewhere will be found allusions to, and orders concerning their offices and functions, but it may be generally taken that the Stewards dissected and prepared the body, the Masters reading the Lectures thereon to the assembled Surgeons and their apprentices.
These Demonstrations usually took place four times in the year, and were termed “Public Anatomies,” from the fact that the subject was generally a public body, i.e., a malefactor, and the attendance of the free Surgeons was compulsory on these occasions; besides these Public Anatomies, there were also an indefinite number of “Private Anatomies” held at the Hall, and at these the attendance was by invitation. It was illegal for any one to dissect a “humane bodye” within the limits of the Company’s jurisdiction without the permission of the Masters or Governors, and whenever a Surgeon was desirous to anatomatize some specially interesting subject, it was termed a “Private Anatomy,” and generally performed at the Hall by permission, the Surgeon inviting his own friends and pupils, and the Court inviting whom they chose. (See the curious entry as to a Private Anatomy, page [321].)
Besides the Demonstrations of Anatomy, public and private, there were several other lectures delivered (oftentimes once a week) by members of the College of Physicians and members of the Company; two of these, which were trusts, the Arrisian Lecture and Gale’s Anatomy still survive I believe, at the Royal College of Surgeons; the others were provided by the Company out of their corporate funds.
