Anatomy, Surgical and topographical -- Atlases; Surgery -- Atlases; Surgery, Operative -- Atlases
Still, however, this anatomy of form, although so much requiring
purification of its nomenclature, in order to clothe it in the high
reaching dignity of a science, does not disturb the medical or surgical
practitioner, so far as their wants are concerned. Although it may, and
actually does, trammel the votary who aspires to the higher
generalizations and the development of a law of formation, yet, as this
is not the object of the surgical anatomist, the nomenclature, such as
it is, will answer conveniently enough the present purpose.
The anatomy of the human form, contemplated in reference to that of all
other species of animals to which it bears comparison, constitutes the
study of the comparative anatomist, and, as such, establishes the
science in its full intent. But the anatomy of the human figure,
considered as a species, per se, is confessedly the humblest walk of the
understanding in a subject which, as anatomy, is relationary, and
branches far and wide through all the domain of an animal kingdom. While
restricted to the study of the isolated human species, the cramped
judgment wastes in such narrow confine; whereas, in the expansive gaze
over all allying and allied species, the intellect bodies forth to its
vision the full appointed form of natural majesty; and after having
experienced the manifold analogies and differentials of the many, is
thereby enabled, when it returns to the study of the one, to view this
one of human type under manifold points of interest, to the appreciation
of which the understanding never wakens otherwise. If it did not happen
that the study of the human form (confined to itself) had some practical
bearing, such study could not deserve the name of anatomical, while
anatomical means comparative, and whilst comparison implies inductive
reasoning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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