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. I would explain here what they actually do
mean if I had more room and knew enough to do it.
Anatomists divide their science, as well as their subjects, into
fragments. Osteology treats of the skeleton, myology of the muscles,
angiology of the blood vessels, splanchology the digestive organs or
department of the interior, and so on.
People tell pretty tough stories of the young carvists who study anatomy
on subjects taken from life. I would repeat a few of them here, but they
are productive of insomnia, so I will not give them.
I visited a matinee of this kind once for a short time, but I have not
been there since. When I have a holiday now, the idea of spending it in
the dissecting-room of a large and flourishing medical college does not
occur to me.
I never could be a successful surgeon, I fear. While I have no hesitation
about mutilating the English, I have scruples about cutting up other
nationalities. I should always fear, while pursuing my studies, that I
might be called upon to dissect a friend, and I could not do that. I
should like to do anything that would advance the cause of science, but I
should not want to form the habit of dissecting people, lest some day I
might be called upon to dissect a friend for whom I had a great
attachment, or some creditor who had an attachment for me.
[Illustration]
Mr. Sweeney's Cat.
Robert Ormsby Sweeney is a druggist of St. Paul, and though a recent
chronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descendant of a
sure-enough king, and though there is mighty good purple, royal blood in
his veins that dates back where kings used to have something to do to earn
their salary, he goes right on with his regular business, selling drugs at
the great sacrifice which druggists will make sometimes in order to place
their goods within the reach of all.
As soon as I learned that Mr. Sweeney had barely escaped being a crowned
head, I got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up, and I told him
that people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible, and that as it
hadn't shown itself in his family for years he might perhaps finally wear
it out.
He is a mighty pleasant man to meet, anyhow, and you can have just as much
fun with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal blood in
his veins. You could be with him for days on a fishing trip and never
notice it at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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