Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/47

 cradle of an institution now renowned throughout the world, but also the longest continued. Here, for nearly thirty years, amid primitive conditions and difficulties that would appall the modern instructor, taught Warren, Dexter, Waterhouse, and the other giants of that day. Here, with attentive gaze fixed on the dissecting-knife, sat Nathan Smith, James Gardner, John Dixwell, John Hosmer, James Jackson, Benjamin Shurtleff, Robert Thaxter, John Gorham, Rufus Wyman, and others destined to be among the foremost practitioners of their time. Moreover, to assist in popularizing the school, the lectures were also open to seniors “who had obtained the consent of their parents”; and not a few, with the morbid curiosity of youth, availed themselves of this gruesome privilege.

The few simple anatomical specimens at first collected in Holden Chapel speedily became one of the greatest sights of the College, producing the liveliest emotions among visitors, most of whom had no idea that their insides were so fearfully and wonderfully made. One caller, on “A Journey through New England,” was so overcome that he burst into verse, which was published anonymously in the Massachusetts Centinel of July 14, 1787. He was evidently shown about by Dr. Waterhouse, since the whole peroration is devoted to praises of that ornament of the school. A short extract will