te the exact situation of the same organs in all
similar bodies.

The surface of the well-formed human body presents to our observation
certain standard characters with which we compare all its abnormal
conditions. Every region of the body exhibits fixed character proper to
its surface. The neck, the axilla, the thorax, the abdomen, the groin,
have each their special marks, by which we know them; and the eye, well
versed in the characters proper to the healthy state of each, will
soonest discover the nature of all effects of injury--such as
dislocations, fractures, tumours of various kinds, &c. By our
acquaintance with the perfect, we discover the imperfect; by a
comparison with the geometrically true rectangled triangle, or circle,
we estimate the error of these forms when they have become distorted;
and in the same way, by a knowledge of what is the healthy normal
standard of human form, we diagnose correctly its slightest degree of
deformity, produced by any cause whatever, whether by sudden accident,
or slowly-approaching disease.

Now, the abnormal conditions of the surface become at once apparent to
our senses; but those diseased conditions which concern the internal
organs require no ordinary exercise of judgment to discover them. The
outward form masks the internal parts, and conceals from our direct
view, like the covers of a closed volume, the marvellous history
contained within. But still the superficies is so moulded upon the
deeper situated structures, that we are induced to study it as a map,
which discourses of all which it incloses in the healthy or the diseased
state. Thus, the sternum points to A, the aorta; the middle of the
clavicles, to C, the subclavian vessels; the localities 9, 10 of the
coracoid processes indicate the place of the axillary vessels; the
navel, P, points to Q, the bifurcation of the aorta; the pubic
symphysis, Z, directs to the urinary bladder, Y. At the points 7, 8, may
be felt the anterior superior spinous processes of the iliac bones,
between which points and Z, the iliac vessels, V, 6, pass midway to the
thigh, and give off the epigastric vessels, 2, 3, to the abdominal
parietes. Between these points of general relations, which we trace on
the surface of the trunk of the body, the anatomist includes the entire
history of the special relations of the organs within contained. And not
until he is capable of summing together the whole picture of anatomical
analysis, and of viewi