described in 1687 as
being found in the duodenum. The display of the fibrous structure of the
brain seemed a novelty as shown by Spurzheim. One is startled to find
the method anticipated by Raymond Vieussens nearly two centuries ago. I
can hardly think Gordon had ever looked at his figures, though he names
their author, when he wrote the captious and sneering article which
attracted so much attention in the pages of the "Edinburgh Review."

This is the place, if anywhere, to mention any observations I could
pretend to have made in the course of my teaching the structure of the
human body. I can make no better show than most of my predecessors in
this well-reaped field. The nucleated cells found connected with the
cancellated structure of the bones, which I first pointed out and had
figured in 1847, and have shown yearly from that time to the present,
and the fossa masseterica, a shallow concavity on the ramus of the
lower jaw, for the lodgment of the masseter muscle, which acquires
significance when examined by the side of the deep cavity on the
corresponding part in some carnivora to which it answers, may perhaps be
claimed as deserving attention. I have also pleased myself by making a
special group of the six radiating muscles which diverge from the spine
of the axis, or second cervical vertebra, and by giving to it the name
stella musculosa nuchaee. But this scanty catalogue is only an evidence
that one may teach long and see little that has not been noted by those
who have gone before him. Of course I do not think it necessary to
include rare, but already described anomalies, such as the episternal
bones, the rectus sternalis, and other interesting exceptional
formations I have encountered, which have shown a curious tendency to
present themselves several times in the same season, perhaps because the
first specimen found calls our attention to any we may subsequently meet
with.

The anatomy of the scalpel and the amphitheatre was, then, becoming an
exhausted branch of investigation. But during the present century the
study of the human body has changed its old aspect, and become fertile
in new observations. This rejuvenescence was effected by means of two
principal agencies,--new methods and a new instrument.

Descriptive anatomy, as known from an early date, is to the body what
geography is to the planet. Now geography was pretty well known so long
ago as when Arrowsmith, who was born in 1750, published his admir