Here is a broad declaration from the highest authority, and comment would but weaken its effect. To the great majority of thinking men, it will appear as if I were going about to prove that pain was an evil, by advancing arguments in proof of the necessity of Anatomy. But I have good reasons for believing, that certain persons who talk loudly about the horrors of disinterment, are quite unaware of the nature or object of that science, which they would consent to sacrifice at the shrine of an ill-directed, if even a praiseworthy feeling. Let me ask these persons, whether, in the event of a painful and dangerous illness occurring to themselves or their families, they would not desire the attendance of that medical practitioner whom they believed to be skilled in his profession? If any one of them reply to this inquiry affirmatively, I beg of that individual to read again the sentence which I have just quoted from Mr. Abernethy. Dissection and disinterment are _both_ forgotten and forgiven, when agony distorts the features of a beloved sufferer, or when death seems to be impending over him; and when that science which but for Anatomy (_and in the present state of things but for disinterment_) could not exist, is ready at hand to relieve from torture, or to snatch from death. On the other hand, how numerous are actions against surgeons merely for supposed want of skill in treating fractures and other cases, when the patient does not acquire that relief which he expects. Suppose I were exposed to an action from my prosecutors for ignorance in that science which they have just prosecuted me for studying, who would be more ready to prosecute than they? Lest, however, our patients should delicately refrain from seeking information of their medical attendants, as supposing that they would be unwilling to betray the secrets of their _art and mystery_, let them be assured, that necromancy and juggling are not farther removed from the _practice_ of medicine and surgery, than are reserve and mystery from that _theoretical_ information, which every educated practitioner is, at all times, willing to afford. Permit me, Sir, to use this opportunity of detailing a case in surgery: a practice which, in my opinion, ought more frequently to be resorted to, as a means of impressing the public mind with a conviction of the value, _the indispensability_, of practical Anatomy.