Let us enter into the dissecting room of St. Bernard's, and see how our future doctors learn to deal with the ailments our flesh is heir to. It is a spacious chamber, some fifty feet long by thirty feet wide; its floor is slate, cold, and non-absorbent; its walls half-way up of the same impervious material; it has no windows, but is lighted by a glass roof and many gas jets for dark days. On either side are eight strong tables, on each of which lies a corpse. Round each table are several heavy, well-made stools; they need be heavy. They are often subject to rough usage at the hands of their occupants when not engaged in more scientific work.
On this first of October, all the "subjects," as they are technically called, are untouched by the knife; in a few days they will scarcely be recognisable as having ever been our brothers and sisters of the mortal life. The busy scalpel of the anatomy student will be engaged on every limb and feature in "getting out," as it is termed, his "part." Then the observant eye of a man of science would see how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. The Psalmist could have had but a faint idea how much his beautiful phrase conveyed. Here are displayed for us the exquisite sets of muscles and tendons that enable us to move our hands and arms. This part shows the nerve and blood supply of the leg, and that one the machinery by which we smile, laugh, or express our wonder and surprise. Here is a man at work seeking to unfold the marvellous convolutions of the brain, while at another table one has got down to the articulations of the foot, and is showing the pulleys and joints that enable us to walk. The art of anatomical dissection consists in freeing the muscles, tendons, arteries, veins, and nerves from the surrounding fat and connective tissue which in the living body preserves and covers them.
It is absolutely necessary that the student should not only know from books, but actually see with his own eyes, and for a long period attentively observe the origin and course of every nerve, artery, and vein which in the whole body is capable of being dissected out. He must know the exact position of all the muscles, how they move the bones, how they extend or flex the limbs, what nerves supply them with motive power, and how that nerve takes its course from the brain or spinal cord. The number of complications is so great that nothing but patient tracing out with forceps and scalpel for himself will ever teach a man anatomy.