on the subject, and those who have had local means of ascertaining, declare, in the frankest and most unqualified manner, that the knowledge of anatomy is more diffused and deeper in France, Italy, Germany—and, it is added, Ireland-than in England*: Scotland is represented as the worst of all:-and these results are unanimously attributed to, among a few others, the main cause, that those who dissect the most will have the greatest knowledge of anatomyt. The details, indeed, given by the gentlemen who have frequented the hos pitals abroad are most highly interesting-but perhaps they do not affect the general question sufficiently directly to allow of our quoting them, although they all tend, no doubt, to prove the advantages arising from increased facilities of dissection. We shall, however, give a précis of the mode of proceeding at Paris, drawn up from the evidence of those gentlemen who have had long experience there.

We cannot begin better than by extracting the following answer of Mr. Bennett, a gentleman who had, for some years, a considerable number of students under his care at Paris :

It may not be unnecessary to premise, that prior to the revolution in France, the different hospitals in Paris were supported, as in London, by voluntary contributions, and private and distinct funds, each having its separate government. At the period of the revolution all were connected together, and their several funds being consolidated, and further revenues being provided by the government, the management of all the hospitals in Paris was entrusted to a body entitled the "Administration des Hopitaux," which is now composed of the leading noblemen and other distinguished persons in Paris. The Administration des Hopitaux have always felt it their duty, for humanity's sake, to promote the cultivation of medical science, and with that view to give up for anatomical purposes the unclaimed bodies of those who die in hospitals. They thus carry into effect the law passed by the legislative assembly, whereby it was enacted that the bodies of all those persons who die in hospitals, which should be unclaimed within twenty-four hours after death, should be delivered up for the purposes of science. Exhumation was thereby rendered unnecessary, and severe laws were directed against the practice, which at present is never resorted to in Paris.

This, we think, is an admirable arrangement, and, in many points, tallies with that recommended by the Committee. So short a period as twenty-four hours has been objected to, lest the body might be dissected before the friends of the deceased knew of his death, But it

Mr. Brodie is the only one, as far as we recollect, who differs from this. He goes, indeed, so far as to say, that, if his information be correct, they do not dissect much at Paris. The evidence of Mr. Bennett and Dr. Barry proves, we think, that Mr. Brodie has been misinformed. Mr. Lawrence speaks so powerfully in accordance with the position assumed in the text, that we will subjoin one of his answers on this subject.

"245. Are you in the habit of seeing many of the eminent foreign surgeons and anatomists who come to this country? I see many medical persons from France, Germany, and Italy, and have found, from my intercourse with them, that anatomy is much more successfully cultivated in those countries than in England; at the same time I know, from their numerous valuable publications on anatomy, that they are far before us in this science; we have no original standard works at all worthy of the present state of knowledge."

It may be noted that the difficulties of procuring subjects in Scotland is, throughout the evidence, represented as extreme. See the consequence! Her anatomists ranking the lowest, and murder supplying the place of exhumation !

might be doubled, trebled, or quadrupled, and the subject would be equally fit for dissection-as is proved by the supply in this country consisting entirely of bodies raised after a burial that nearly always takes place several days after death, which is very seldom the case abroad. And this very difference of the intermediate length of time may perhaps render it advisable to have the period of forfeiture later than in France. The dissections, it seems, are not carried on at the hospitals where the patients die, but the bodies are taken thence to one of the two great dissecting establishments, the Ecole de Médecine, and the amphitheatre adjoining the Hopital de la Pitié, which alone are allowed in Paris. The bodies are taken from the principal hospitals-as also from the two great houses of refuge-the Hospices Salpêtrière and Bicêtre-sewed in a clean cloth, and placed in a covered cart. Everything is conducted with the most perfect decency; and, after death, the priest attached to the hospital performs certain religious ceremonies over the body, which is then placed in the dead-room till the twenty-four hours have expired.

There is, in the Appendix, a copy of the regulations relating to the removal of bodies and to dissection in the establishments at Paris; the order, the decency, we might add the delicacy of which, seem to us to render it a perfect model. It is proposed that, with us, in accordance with the usages of our religion, the funeral rites should take place after dissection; in Paris they are performed before, but the bodies are ultimately buried. We mention this for the purpose of expressing our conviction that, adopting such arrangements as these, and a certainty being established that no religious feeling will be violated, it is impossible that the prejudices against dissection should long continue to exist.

The ample supply of subjects gives opportunities to the Professors at Paris to pursue courses of instruction most advantageous to the communication of science, from which the scantiness of bodies here debars both professor and student. The following is from the evidence of Dr. Barry, a gentleman who resided for four years in Paris, and took his doctor's degree there :

590. Is there not attached to La Pitié a gentleman of the name of Monsieur Lisfranc, who is celebrated for teaching the mode of performing upon a dead body the principal surgical operations? Yes, there is.-591. Are not his demonstrations frequented by a very large number of English students who resort to Paris? Particularly so, almost by every one.-592. Do you know of any similar course given in this country? I know of none; I have studied in Dublin and in this country; I know of none.-593. Do you not consider that course of surgical instruction of the highest importance? I certainly do. -594. Should you not think it unsafe to commit yourself, for the performance of a difficult operation, to a surgeon who had never performed upon a dead body, an operation which he was required to perform upon the living? I certainly should, unless he had acquired the necessary dexterity by having operated upon the living body.-595. But if he begins to perform upon the living body, before he has performed upon the dead body, he necessarily, until he acquires that experience, must perform those first operations in a very awkward and insufficient manner? Most certainly; and independently of Monsieur Lisfranc's demonstrations, each pupil may have as many subjects as he pleases, and operate upon them himself, or in company with other

pupils they instruct and help each other at La Pitié; I say this in relation to statements made by some witnesses examined yesterday as to the English schools, some stating that two subjects, and some that three were enough. I conceive that there is no eminent surgeon in Paris who has not, in the course of his education, dissected and operated upon more than thirty subjects.

This brings us to a question upon which the witnesses differ remarkably in opinion-namely, the number of bodies which they deem necessary for a student during the course of his studies. Sir Astley Cooper says, three bodies during a season of sixteen months; Mr. Brodie, one, or one and a half, in a year; Mr. Abernethy says, that taking two years for the period of education, three bodies are enough for two students for that time; Mr. Lawrence says, three or four for one student for one year; Mr. Green, of St. Thomas's Hospital, says, three for each student yearly; Mr. Cæsar Hawkins, two in the whole course of the student's education, whether one or two years. The gentlemen who have seen the hospitals on the continent-where dissection and the performing operations on the dead are carried to such an extent-rate the fitting number higher than any of those whose experience is confined to this country. Dr. Barry, who states at thirty, as has been already seen, the number which he conceives all the eminent surgeons in Paris had dissected and operated upon in the course of their education, when asked what he should "consider, with every view to economy in the use of subjects, sufficient for an adequate course of surgical instruction," says, that he "should think four subjects in a season would be the very least, for two seasons at least." Mr. Granville Sharp Pattison, who was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in the University of Maryland, gives the same yearly number; but adds, the lowest,"certainly the very lowest, period" of the student's education should be three. years.

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There is also a considerable, though by no means so great, a difference of opinion as to the necessity of a pupil's performing on the dead body all the principal operations before he performs them on the living. Mr. Abernethy and some others do not think it necessary, though none go so far as to say they do not consider it beneficial: they hold that from dissection, and witnessing dissection and operations, a young surgeon may safely perform an operation for the first time on a living person. Sir Astley Cooper, Mr. Lawrence, and (we may say of course) the gentlemen who have practised in France, are strongly of the opposite way of thinking. The following answers of Sir Astley afford a melancholy contrast between what ought to be and what, from the scarcity of subjects, is :

8. In any part of the course which a student is now expected to go through, is he instructed how to perform upon a dead body, the principal of those operations which, in the common course of practice, he may be required to perform upon the living ?-He is only shown the mode of performing different operations, but whenever subjects can be obtained for the purpose, it is considered that it is his duty to perform the operations himself upon the dead body.-9. Can bodies be obtained in such numbers at present, that it frequently happens that the students have an opportunity of performing those operations on a dead body?-It now very rarely happens that a student can obtain a body for the purpose of performing operations, and

there is a lecturer in London who will be probably examined by this Committee, who has been unable to obtain a body to exhibit operations upon the dead, for a great number of days.-10. Can you state at all, how many bodies have been used in teaching the pupil how to perform operations upon the dead body, that is, in the hospital schools in London, in the course of the year?-I am afraid there have been scarcely any lately used by the students, but at all events very few, on account of the great difficulty in obtaining them.-11. You nevertheless would consider that an essential part of a good course of surgical instruction ?-My opinion is, not only that no person should practise surgery without privately performing all the opera tions upon the dead, but that he should also exhibit his powers of operating upon the dead, in the presence of a great number of individuals.-12. Can the young practitioner be expected to possess the necessary courage in performing a difficult operation on the living, if he has not already been taught to perform a similar operation upon a dead body?-He must be a blockhead if he made the attempt; and the practice of the most sensible and the most expert surgeons in London has been to visit the receptacles for the dead, for the purpose of performing the operation which they were about to execute upon the living, if the operations were in the least novel.

Mr. Lawrence, also, is very decided upon this point. We have already extracted Dr. Barry's opinions on this subject.

We shall now allude to one more point of difference, because we think we have hit upon a clue which, with some modifications and allowances, will tend to account for the existence of them all. The subject to which we now allude is one on which we can speak freely, and form a direct judgment of our own-for it is one of general reason, not of medical science. Sir Astley Cooper lays down an opinion that bodies should not be exceedingly cheap, because, if they be so, " as they are in France, the result of their being so is, that they are less valuable to the student, and they do not take precisely the same pains that they would if the body cost them a little more." Mr. Brodie adopts this doctrine only by halves-for in the answer in which he attributes superiority to the English over other students, he says that he attributes it as much "to national character as to the cause mentioned by Sir Astley Cooper, namely, the superfluity of subjects." Mr. Abernethy seems, to a considerable extent, to contradict himself on this point:

199. Do you concur in the opinion of Sir Astley Cooper, that the supply of bodies may be redundant, so as to occasion negligence, as in the hospitals abroad?-Unquestionably, the supply may be so great that students are likely to be less attentive.-199*. So far from promoting science, such a redundant supply would rather impede it ?-It would depend upon the character of the students; some would profit according to the abundance of their opportunities of acquiring knowledge. The English students are in general very industrious.

Now, we confess, we never saw a position laid down by persons of eminence with which we more thoroughly disagreed. Mr. Lawrence has not the question directly put to him as to superfluity—but says, in most decided terms, "that those who possess the greatest opportunities of dissection would be the best qualified," and he has, in an earlier part of his evidence, said that he understands that there is no limit in Paris, but that "a person employs as many as he likes," without any comment of disapprobation. It is, we own, to us perfectly

incomprehensible how three such men as those we have named could lay down such a proposition. It appears to us that it would be just as rational to say, that the more books a student had on the subject of his study, the more tools and materials were furnished to a mechanic, the less would their progress be. That each separate body would in the event of an unlimited supply be less thoroughly dissected, is very probable but what then? The only use of dissection is to instruct the dissector and we cannot see how his knowledge would be diminished by its being derived from several bodies; as, indeed, in all cases it must be. That a young man who was industrious and active would learn his profession more quickly and better with as many bodies as he chose to ask for, we cannot doubt. In the case of too few, he would be detained in his search for such or such a point of knowledge by want of means to acquire it—and we really cannot see how any case of too many could arise. There is no motive for it.

But, we think, that there is one principle which will go a considerable way towards accounting for these discrepancies of opinion-viz. that the one side that, namely, consisting of those who give the smaller number of bodies as necessary, who say that operations on the dead are not necessary, and who think that an unlimited supply would be hurtful-looks to the system as it is, and as it is here. The other, we should say, turns to what ought to be, and to what is elsewhere. We do not mean to carry this to its full extent-but we think the doctrine may be, more in some than others, and not always in the same point in each, traced to the spirit which we have indicated above. We could point out numberless instances which tend to support this idea; but it is better that we should devote our space to the pith of the subject, than to striving to account for differences which we are sorry to see exist. We think if any of our readers should be tempted to go through this evidence—and we can assure them we have seldom met any more interesting-they will see reason to agree with us.

We are sorry to state that the effect of reading this mass of evidence has been to leave on our minds the conviction that the study of anatomy is very sensibly declining in this country, and that that arises from the lack of subjects. All those examined agree on this point, that the supply of bodies is by no means sufficient. However they may differ as to the number needed, the number furnished is far, far below the lowest estimate. It is quite clear that unless some mode of supplying subjects be adopted, surgery and medicine will, as the students advance into practitioners, grow worse and worse. The Committee have thoroughly come to the same conclusions, as will be seen in the following extract from their report. It is lamentable to read the last statement there made, which, like all the rest, is most fully borne out by the evidence, which is throughout referred to numerically in the margin. It shews to what a state the scarcity of subjects is fast reducing the general practitioners throughout the country. No blame can attach to them individually for not acquiring that which is beyond their reach-but it is dreadful to think that that which is universally laid down as the only real foundation for medical knowledge, should be unattainable by what has been computed at twenty-nine thirtieths of the profession-we mean the general practitioners in the country :

It is the duty of the student to obtain, before entering into practice, the