Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/55

 mids of Egypt—remained hopelessly dank; a coat of varnish, applied in a moment of lavish optimism, refused to dry; and they were gradually abandoned altogether. Indeed the whole building soon sank into desuetude, and is described in 1825 as totally deserted.

The desertion was not really total. For a few weeks during each spring term the doors were unlocked for the repetition of the single course of “sepulchral lectures in anatomy” perseveringly delivered in the amphitheatre by the Warrens, father and son, for over sixty years. To make the most of the rare and hardly-obtained ‘‘subjects” (usually one cadaver a year) these lectures were often from two to three hours long. For further illustration, a collection of anatomical preparations, specimens, models, and skeletons was kept in the upper storey of the building, and midnight raids on the ‘‘medical museum” formed one of the favorite diversions of many generations of godless undergrads. (As late as the eighteen-fifties the approved decoration of a “sporty” student’s room consisted of skulls, cross-bones, and other fragments of the departed.) There is little doubt that from these orgies originated the mysterious and irrepressible “Med. Fac.”

In the spring term also the lower floor was restored to its traditional use as a chemical lecture-room, for a