Anatomy (human)

“ It is upon these facts that I have founded my system of Stomachology; and contemplating what has been done, what is doing, and what is likely to be done, in the analogous science of phrenology, I do not despair of seeing the human body mapped out, and marked all over with faculties, feelings, propensities, and powers, like a tattooed New Zealander. The study of anatomy will then be entirely superseded, and the scientific world would be guided, as the fashionable world is now, entirely by externals. ”

“ Anatomy—the the knowledge based on principle—is the foundation of the curative art, cultivated as a science in all its branchings; and comparison is the nurse of reason, which we are fain to make our guide in bringing the practical to bear productively. The human body, in a state of health, is the standard whereunto we compare the same body in a state of disease. ”

“ Two other organic sciences, those of anatomy and physiology, have added enormously to our knowledge of animated nature. Anatomy, which is of high practical importance from its relation to surgery, is a science of ancient origin, many important facts concerning it having been discovered by the physicians of old Greece and Rome. This study continued during later centuries, and by the opening of the nineteenth the gross anatomy of the human frame was fairly well known, and many facts in its finer anatomy had been traced. ”

“ Human anatomy then deals with the form and structure of the human body, and describes how the different parts and organs are arranged, as revealed by observation, by dissection, and by the microscope. ”

“ Near these are the books of anatomy, which do not so much contain descriptions of the parts of the human body, as the barbarous names which have been given them – neither likely to cure the patient of his disease nor the physician of his ignorance. ”

“ Careful anatomical study is the sure and indispensable preparation for that next advanced range of clinical observation, where pathology and therapeutics bring us into the direct study of the sick.
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The more thoroughly the human organization is investigated, the more wonderful will the unapproachable mechanism for the use of human life be seen to be. We shall never regret any amount of time and care spent in acquiring the most intimate knowledge of human anatomy. ”

“ It seems as if his object, in every painting of the human figure, were to display his knowledge of anatomy; and the bodies are often twisted and contorted as if to show the enormous development of muscle in the giant limbs. ”

“ Anatomy makes man structural. Physiology continues this explanation, measuring human strength by bones and sinews, and human life by material law. Phrenology makes man thieving or honest, according to the development of the cranium; but anatomy, physiology, phrenology, do not define the image of God, or immortal man. To measure capacities by the size of the brain, and limit strength to the exercise of a muscle, would subjugate intelligence, and place Mind at the mercy of organization and non-intelligence. ”

“ EVER since the study of human anatomy has attracted any attention, variations in the arrangement of the different structures of the body have been noticed. For many centuries, the signification of these variations was not understood ”

“ The necessity of knowing, from an artistic point of view, the structure of the human body makes clear the importance we attach, from the same point of view, to the study of the anatomy of animals—that is, the study of comparative anatomy. ”

“ Let us take anatomy for an example: must not the first man who surmounted natural repugnance, and ventured to open a human body, suppose that by dissecting and examining all its parts, he should obtain a knowledge of its structure, mechanism and functions? ”

“ In order to show more clearly how each part is subservient to these ends, I shall give a short account of the structure of the human body, but I must premise, that the nature of this course will prevent my entering minutely into anatomical detail. All that can be done is, to give such a general outline of anatomy and physiology, as will furnish individuals with so much knowledge of themselves, as may enable them to guard against habitual sickness. ”

“ Before this anatomy had been learned mainly from animals, and as human beings differ most widely from animals by their brain, naturally, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, anatomists gave themselves to thorough work on this structure where so many discoveries were waiting to be made. ”

“ Viewed superficially any of the sciences seem extremely simple; anatomically we may divide the body into flesh and bone, chemically we may make the simple divisions between solid, liquid and gas, but to thoroughly master the science of anatomy it is necessary to spend years in close application and learn to know all the little nerves, the ligaments which bind articulations between various parts of the bony structure, to study the several kinds of tissue and their disposition in our system where they form the bones, muscles, glands, etc., which in the aggregate we know as the human body. ”

“ We must not begin the study of the face with that of the human anatomy. The web of muscles is so close, the direction of the fibres so intricate, that we are baffled unless we know the origin of these muscles in the lower animals, unless we investigate their office in simpler beings, and the modifications which they undergo on the zoological ladder. ”

“ Again having seen human bodies dissected one knows how the bones lie, and the muscles and sinews, and all the order and conditions of anatomy, so that it is possible with greater security and more correctness to place the limbs and arrange the muscles of the body in the figures we draw. ”

“ Human anatomy is either general, specific, topographical or surgical. Those terms do not imply the dissection and anatomy of generals, specialists, topographers and surgeons, as they might seem to imply, but really mean something else. ”

“ In the absence of human subjects, anatomy was taught at Salerno upon the pig. The principal portion of the teaching in anatomy consisted of the demonstration of the organs in the great cavities of the body and their relations, with some investigations of their form and the presumed functions of the corresponding organs in man. ”

“ The finest and most intricate parts of the human frame are delineated and traced with a distinctness and exactitude hardly to be conceived, and the slightest ramifications of the nerves and vessels have been followed with a clearness and accuracy rarely seen in the most exact preparations of the best cabinets of anatomy. ”

“ It is claimed that this work has been examined by learned scientific men, skilled in anatomy and physiology, and not a line or lineament of the skin surface of the human body has been omitted in this delicate, intricate carving. ”

“ Medicine was the foster-mother of chemistry, because it has to do with the preparation of drugs and the detection of poisons; of botany, because it enabled the physician to recognize medicinal herbs; of comparative anatomy and physiology, because the man who studied human anatomy and physiology for purely medical purposes was led to extend his studies to the rest of the animal world. ”

“ The practically useful, but eminently unscientific, doctrine, that there can be alteration of function without alteration of structure, has effaced some of the most essential distinctions between anatomy and physiology, and especially between morbid anatomy and morbid physiology. ”

“ Therapeutic Sarcognomy, a science often demonstrated and endorsed by able physicians, gives the anatomy not of the physical structure, but of the vital forces of the body and soul as located in every portion of the constitution—a science vastly more important than physical anatomy, as the anatomy of life is more important than the anatomy of death. ”

“ As you contemplate studying this science and have asked to know the necessary studies, I wish to impress it upon your minds that you begin with anatomy, and you end with anatomy, a knowledge of anatomy is all you want or need, as it is all you can use or ever will use in your practice, although you may live one hundred years. ”

“ If we take for comparison those that assimilate to our general form, anatomy shows us that our organs are the same as theirs; we find in them muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, that is found in man himself. Physiology, in turn, has demonstrated that, in the body of man, the organs, the muscles, the nerves, have the same animal functions. ”

“ The provinces of Anatomy and Physiology may now, we believe, be looked upon as distinctly and permanently defined. Anatomy is understood to treat solely of the Structure of Living Bodies, and Physiology solely of their Functions. ”

“ Anatomy shows us that animals and plants are wonderfully constructed. But after we understand their architecture and even their minute structure, the questions remain: What are all the organs and tissues for, and what takes place within the parts that are actually alive? Physiology attempts to answer questions of this nature. It therefore stands in contrast with anatomy and is supplementary to it. The activities of the body are varied and depend on life for their manifestation — they may be called vital activities. Physiology embraces a study of them all. ”

“ As the student of anatomy can build up the entire system from the examination of a single bone, so may a person by a careful study of an important member of the body such as the hand, apart from anything superstitious or even mystical, build up the entire action of the system and trace every effect back to its cause. ”

“ Minute anatomy has not yet attained a degree of perfection competent to settle a point of such subtility.”
Dr. C. afterward goes on to prove that no single nerve, or organ, can perform two distinct functions, but that each is capable of one mode of action, and no more; that between a nerve, a muscle, and a gland, the only difference known to exist, is that of organization; and that if they are organized alike, and endowed with life, their properties will be similar, and they will act in the same way. ”

“ Yet neither the anatomist of the living soul nor the anatomist of the living body becomes insensible in any appreciable degree to the exigence of his own pains, and the memories of a thousand triumphant operations will not hinder the start and outcry of the greatest of surgeons if you stick an unexpected pin into any part of his anatomy. ”

“ The physiologist of the present day is too little of a comparative anatomist, and far too closely enveloped in the absurd jargon of the anthropotomist, ever to hope to reveal any great truth for science, and dispel the mists which still hang over the phenomena of the nervous system. ”

“ What I have found, and found so much reason to lament, is, that while anatomy has been taught as a science ought to be taught, as a matter of autopsy, and observation, and strict discipline; in a very large number of cases, physiology has been taught as if it were a mere matter of books and of hearsay. ”

“ The difficulty of obtaining material relating to the anatomy of the soft parts of the body has had the effect that this portion of the description of the anatomy of man has received very slight attention. ”

“ Moreover, in order to be entirely perfect, innumerable times he made anatomical studies, dissecting men's bodies in order to see the principles of their construction and the concatenation of the bones, muscles, veins, and nerves, the various movements and all the postures of the human body ”

“ Anatomy studies the organism in space. Physiology studies it also in time. After the study of form and composition follows close that of action, and this leads us along back to the first moment of the germ, and forward to the resolution of the living frame into its lifeless elements. In this way Anatomy, or rather that branch of it which we call Histology, has become inseparably blended with the study of function. ”