Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/28

 xviii INTRODUCTION

lished among other works "Crania Americana," 1839, "Crania iEgyp- tica," 1844, "Ethnology and Archeology of the American Aborigines," 1846, and an "Illustrated System of Human Anatomy," 1849. His scientific work was of great value.

Among other Philadelphians interested in anatomy, who, however, held no chair of anatomy in any of the medical schools, Harrison Allen stands foremost. He was a graduate of medicine from the University of Pennsylvania and was appointed to the chair of comparative anatomy and zoology in the auxiliary department of medicine there in 1865, which position he held until 1878, when he became professor of physiology. He also served for some time as professor of anatomy and surgery in the Pennsylvania Dental College. In 1891-2, he was director of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy. From 1891 to 1896 he for the second time held the chair of comparative anatomy and zoology at the University. He was president of the American Society of Anatomists from 1891-3. He wrote a good text-book on human anatomy, and contributed a consider- able number of important papers upon various subjects relating to physi- ology and anatomy. He also wrote an important monograph on the " Bats of North America."

In point of time New York seems to have been next to Philadelphia in the introduction of practical human anatomy. Until the appearance of Dr. Dulles' paper, cited above, it was commonly stated that the first practical teaching of anatomy in this country was the private course in human anatomy offered at New York by Doctors John Bard and Peter Middleton, about 1750. In 1763 a course of lectures on anatomy was given at King's College (afterwards Columbia University) by Samuel Clossy, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. Four years later, upon his proposal, a medical depart- ment was established in connection with the college. Clossy, Samuel Bard, son of John Bard mentioned above, and Peter Middleton were on the faculty of this new school of medicine. While at this and other medical schools in New York there were numerous teachers who fulfilled the requirements demanded, none showed the scientific spirit which distinguished the leading men at Philadelphia. The scientific micro- scopic anatomy introduced in New York by C. Heitzmann, Satterthwaite, Delafield, Prudden and others in the seventies and eighties, found no lodgment in the anatomical departments of the medical schools of that city, but was developed as an aid to pathology.

Among the early teachers of anatomy at Columbia (the College of Physicians and Surgeons) mention may be made of Wright Post, John R. Rhinelander and Robert Watts.

Dr. Valentine Mott, who about 1806 served as demonstrator of anat- omy to Dr. Post, gives an interesting picture of the mode of obtaining