Southwood Smith

“ This single fact is sufficient to demonstrate to the public, that instead of throwing obstacles in the way of dissection, it is a duty which they owe to themselves to afford every possible facility to its practice, and to hold out to every member of the profession, the most powerful inducements to engage in it, by rewarding with confidence those who cultivate anatomy, by making excellence in anatomy indispensable to all offices in dispensaries and hospitals, and by thus rendering it impossible for any one who is ignorant of anatomy, to obtain rank in his profession. ”

“ We do not blame the Americans for abolishing the practice of exhumation; but we blame them for stopping there. We maintain, that it is both absurd and criminal, to make this practice felony, without providing in some other method for the cultivation of anatomy. ”

“ The basis of all medical and surgical knowledge is anatomy. Not a single step can be made either in medicine or surgery, considered either as an art or a science without it. This should seem self evident, and to need neither proof nor illustration: nevertheless, as it is useful occasionally to contemplate the evidence of important truth, we shall show why it is, that there can be no rational medicine, and no safe surgery, without a thorough knowledge of anatomy. ”

“ To the surgeon, anatomy is eminently what Bacon has so beautifully said that knowledge in general is: it is power—it is power to lessen pain, to save life, and to eradicate diseases, which, without its aid, would be incurable and fatal. ”

“ All this time these convulsions are merely a symptom; that symptom depends upon, and denotes, most important disease in the brain: the only chance of saving life, is the prompt and vigorous application of proper remedies to the brain; but the practitioner whose mind is occupied with the symptom, and who prescribes antispasmodics, not only loses the time in which alone any thing can be done to snatch the victim from death, but by his remedies absolutely adds fuel to the flame which is consuming his patient. ”

“ If has been conceived that the sanctity which attaches to the dead, is reflected back in a profounder feeling of respect for the living; that the solemnity with which death is regarded, elevates, in the general estimation, the value of life; and that he who cannot approach the mortal remains of a fellow creature without an emotion of awe, must regard with horror every thing which places in danger the life of a human being. ”

“ In this country, there is no other method of obtaining subjects but that of exhumation: aversion to this employment may be pardoned: dislike to the persons who engage in it is natural, but to regard them with detestation, to exult in their punishment, to determine for themselves its nature and measure, and to endeavor to assume the power of inflicting it with their own hands, is absurd. Magistrates have too often fostered the prejudices of the people, and afforded them the means of executing their vengeance on the objects of their aversion. ”

“ Every one desires to live as long as he can. Every one values health "above all gold and treasure." Every one knows that as far as his own individual good is concerned, protracted life and a frame of body sound and strong, free from the thousand pains that flesh is heir to, are unspeakably more important than all other objects, because life and health must be secured before any possible result of any possible circumstance can be of consequence to him. ”

“ It seems impossible to exhibit a more striking illustration of the great value of anatomical knowledge.
But if there be any disease, which, from the frequency of its occurrence, from the variety of its forms, from the difficulty of discriminating between it and other maladies, and from the danger attendant on almost all its varieties, requires a combination of the most minute investigation, with the most accurate anatomical knowledge, it is that of hernia. ”

“ Hence the most profoundly ignorant of medicine, are often the oldest members of the profession, and those who have had the most extensive practice. A medical education, founded on a knowledge of anatomy, is, therefore, not only indispensable to prevent the most fatal errors, but to enable a person to obtain advantage from those sources of improvement which extensive practice may open to him. ”

“ In the improvement of the art which has for its object the preservation of health and life, every individual is, therefore, deeply interested. An enlightened physician and a skilful surgeon, are in the daily habit of administering to their fellow men more real and unquestionable good, than is communicated, or communicable by any other class of human beings to another. Ignorant physicians and surgeons are the most deadly enemies of the community: the plague itself is not so destructive ”

“ So long as the practice of exhumation continues, a race of men must be trained up to violate the law. These men must go out in company for the purpose of nightly plunder, and plunder of the most odious kind, tending in a peculiar and most alarming measure to brutify the mind, and to eradicate every feeling and sentiment worthy of a man. ”

“ So far then is it from being true, that medical theories are of no practical importance, there is the closest possible connection between the speculations of the physician in his closet, and the measures which he adopts at the bed side of his patient. Truth to him is a benignant power, which stops the progress of disease, protracts the duration of life, and mitigates the suffering it may be unable to remove: error is a fearfully active and tremendously potent principle. ”

“ Though no maxim can be more indisputable than that those who are supported by the public die in its debt, and that their remains at least, might, without injustice, be converted to the public use, yet it is not proposed to dispose in this manner of the bodies of all the poor: but only of that portion of the poor who die unclaimed and without friends, and whose appropriation to this public service could, therefore, afford pain to no one. ”

“ The system of medicine and surgery which is established in any country, has a greater influence over the lives of its inhabitants than the epidemic diseases produced by its climate, or the decisions of its government concerning peace and war. The devastations of the yellow fever will bear no comparison with the ravages committed by the Brunonian system; and the slaughter of the field of Waterloo counts not of victims, a tithe of the number of which the Cullenian doctrine of debility can justly boast. Anatomy alone will not teach a physician to think, much less to think justly ”

“ Pupils flocked to them from all quarters of the globe, and they essentially contributed to that advancement of science which the present age has witnessed. In the 19th century, the good people of Scotland, that intelligent, that cool and calculating, that most reasonable and thinking people, have thought proper to return to the worst feeling and the worst conduct of the darkest periods of antiquity. There is at present no offence whatever, which seems to have such power to heat and exalt into a kind of torrent, the blood which usually flows so calmly and sluggishly in the veins of a Scotchman. ”

“ Disease, which it is the object of these arts to prevent and to cure, is denoted by disordered function: disordered function cannot be understood without a knowledge of healthy function; healthy function cannot be understood without a knowledge of structure; structure cannot be understood unless it be examined.
The organs on which all the important functions of the human body depend, are concealed from the view. There is no possibility of ascertaining their situation and connections, much less their nature and operation, without inspecting the interior of this curious and complicated machine. ”

“ Several systems of vessels in which the most important functions of animal life are carried on—the absorbent system, for example, and even that portion of it which receives the food after it is digested, and which conveys it into the blood, are invisible to the naked eye, except under peculiar circumstances: whence it must be evident, not only that the interior of the human body must be laid open, in order that its organs may be seen; but that these organs must be minutely and patiently dissected, in order that their structure may be understood. ”

“ If any concession and co-operation on the part of the public, for this great public object is to be expected, and without concession and co-operation nothing can be done, it is not easy to conceive of any plan which requires less public concession or implies less violation of public feeling. ”

“ This is a fact which nothing but anatomy could teach, and affords the explanation of a symptom which nothing but anatomy could give. The knowledge of it would infallibly correct a mistake, into which a person who is ignorant of it, would be sure to fall: in fact, persons ignorant of it do constantly commit the error. We have know several instances in which organic disease of the liver has been considered, and treated as rheumatism of the shoulder. In each of these cases, disease in a most important organ might have been allowed to steal on insidiously, until it became incurable ”

“ It is no less true in medicine than in philosophy and morals, that there is no such thing as innoxious error; that men's opinions invariably influence their conduct; and that physicians, like other men, act as they think. Asclepiades, whose mind was full of corpuscles and interstices, was intent on finding suitable remedies, which he discovered in gestation, friction, and the use of wine. By various exercises, he proposed to render the pores more open, and to make the juices and corpuscles, the retention of which causes disease, to pass more freely. ”

“ The ancients, indeed, who believed that the arteries were air tubes, could not possibly have conceived the existence of an aneurism. Were the number of individuals in Europe, who are now annually cured of aneurism, by the interference of art, to be assumed as the basis of a calculation of the number of persons who must have perished by this disease, from the beginning of the world to the time of Galen, it would convey some [Pg 8] conception of the extent to which anatomical knowledge is the means of saving human life. ”

“ The sweetest, the most sacred associations are indissolubly connected with the person of those we love. It is with the corporeal frame that our senses have been familiar: it is that on which we have gazed with rapture; it is that which has so often been the medium of conveying to our hearts the thrill of exstacy. We cannot separate the idea of the peculiarities and actions of a friend from the idea of his person. ”