Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/30

 xx INTRODUCTION

Museum, a part of which is the same, specimens of my own industry in the way of minute dissection, a pursuit to which I was very partial and strongly recommend you to follow — a preparation of the nervous system in a small subject and some of the arteries and the veins."

In Boston the earliest record of dissection for teaching anatomy appears to be that of the anatomical lectures given by Dr. John Warren at the request of the Boston Medical Society in 1780. This led up to the establishment of the Harvard Medical School. As early as 1748 there were, however, at Harvard College a human skeleton and a preparation of the human veins and arteries filled with wax, and in 1764, in the fire which destroyed all but one of the college buildings, there perished " a collection of the most approved medical authors, also anatomical cuts, and two complete skeletons of different sexes." This collection, as the "Massa- chusetts Gazette" of February 26, 1764, states, "would have been very serviceable to a professor of physic and anatomy, when the revenues of the college should have been sufficient to subsist a gentleman in this character."*

There is good evidence that plans for the teaching of anatomy as the basal science of medicine were entertained for some time before a professorship of anatomy was established at Harvard. Ezekiel Hersey, of Hingham, who died in 1770, left £1000 and his widow left a like sum to be applied to the support of a professor of anatomy and surgery. (Thacher, "Medical Biography," 182S.) The "Hersey professorship" was the first endowed chair of anatomy in the country. John Warren was appointed to the professorship in 1782, and held the chair until 1815. His son, John Collins Warren, held the chair from 1815-47. The pro- fessor of anatomy not only gave instruction to medical students, but also lectures to the academic students at Cambridge. In 1847 a new professor- ship of anatomy was established, the Parkman. The Hersey professorship was assigned to the academic department at Cambridge and conferred upon Jeffries Wyman, one of the most original and productive anatomists this country has produced. The Parkman professorship was assigned to the medical school in Boston, and conferred upon Oliver Wendell Holmes, who held the chair until 1882. E. L. Mark now holds the Hersey pro- fessorship and T. Dwight, the Parkman.

The two Warrens, although men interested in surgery rather than

anatomy, were men of broad interests, and did much to build up the

anatomical museum, now named after John Warren. John Warren, who

introduced anatomy into Boston and Cambridge, was largely self-taught,

although doubtless much influenced by the English anatomy of the

eighteenth century. His elder brother, Dr. Joseph Warren, was a pupil of

ical Sketch of Dr. George Parkman," a lecture delivered by O. W. Holmes before the Massachusetts Medical College, November 7, 1750.
 * "The Benefactors of the Medical School of Harvard University with a Biograph-