Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/397



FURTHER DETAILS CONCERNING THE ADVANCE IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF ANATOMY—DISSECTING MADE A PART OF THE REGULAR TRAINING OF A MEDICAL STUDENT—IATROCHEMISTS AND IATROPHYSICISTS—THE EMPLOYMENT OF LATIN IN LECTURING AND WRITING ON MEDICAL TOPICS

''Further Details Concerning the Advance in Our Knowledge of Gross Anatomy.''—In the preceding chapter I have given some account of the efforts made during the sixteenth century by certain physicians to lay solidly the foundations of a gross anatomy of the human body. The time was ripe for such a movement, and the right sort of men took charge of it and pushed it forward to such a stage of successful accomplishment that we physicians of to-day are able to continue in the direction indicated, and under the impulse communicated, by these master builders. These men, it should be remembered, did something more than merely to lay solid and durable foundations in the form of an accurate anatomy, they also taught the correct methods of procedure for the erection of the superstructure of the science of medicine.

Up to the end of the sixteenth century almost all the work done in anatomy was effected with the aid of the scalpel alone, the object being to isolate and expose clearly to view the larger tissues and organs, such as muscles, arteries, veins, nerves, etc. In a very few instances more elaborate methods were devised, even as early as during the fifteenth