them, how could doctors be properly taught? And if the medical schools did not bury them, the Unions would have to bury them; so you see medical students are actually of some service in diminishing, however slightly, the parish rates-for that is the purpose to which the money they pay for their parts is appropriated.

The dissecting-room porter is always a favourite with the students. Besides keeping the room tidy, he injects the bodies, and puts up the diagrams for lecture, altogether making himself so useful that the lecturer sometimes can scarcely venture to chaff him if he puts up a diagram topsy-turvy.

He provides the students with aprons, sleeves, sponges, and, if required, with dissecting-cases and bones; in fact, he generally calls himself Dealer in Osteology! Men like to go and have a pipe in his room and see him inject, when lazy or tired of dissecting. Some porters inject very well, some do it so badly that the arteries are swelled and distorted like varicose veins, so that a good injector is appreciated by the students, and comes in for sundry tips, which, with his Christmas-box, make his disgusting office somewhat bearable.

He injects bodies through the aorta (the largest artery in the body); he gets at this in a curious way, which it is necessary to adopt, or he would spoil the dissection of the chest. An incision about four inches long is made in the skin, just over the breast-bone; this is sawn through, and the points of a pair of forceps inserted, of the same construction as a pair of scissors, only not sharp; the blades are separated by a screw, and through the opening in the bone thus dilated you see, after a little dissection, the beginning of the aorta as it leaves

the heart; the injecting-syringe then forces the warm size into every artery of the system, in the same manner as the heart propels the blood, often with a precision in the small blood-vessels that is quite surprising. Bodies are sometimes injected through the common carotid or the common femoral artery, but this plan does not give such good injections on both sides as injecting by the aorta.

CHAPTER IV.

DISSECTING ROOM OFFICIALS-CURIOSITIES IN ANATOMY.

anatomy

The "demonstrator of anatomy"-Distinguish him from the lecturer on "Assistant demonstrators " "Prosectors" - Impossible to learn anatomy without dissecting - List of structures Aliases Instances of nature's mechanics - Pianoforte muscles - Music - stools -How to play gracefully — Why the ring-finger is so weak-The great "hippopotamus" question-“Ape v. angel - BODFI Hippocampus minor"- How to make a model of the brain-What the cerebellum is not.

The "sea-horse'

66

THE dissecting-room is theoretically under the charge of the anatomy lecturer; practically, he never comes near it unless he wants to speak to some one there. So the demonstrator of anatomy is the presiding genius of practical anatomy, who shows you how to get out your "lenticular ganglion," or your "anastomoses" round the elbow-joint, or anything else requiring nicety. The lecturer meddles with nothing but "descriptive anatomy," as it is called. He describes first the bones, then the ligaments, then the muscles, then the blood-vessels, then the nerves, and then the organs with special functions. In describing the vessels and nerves, he just tells you where they come

from, where they go, what their branches are, and

so on.

The demonstrator instructs you in practical cutting, and gives a lecture every day, or every other day, on regional anatomy; that is to say, he takes a certain region and describes all the structures you find in it, pointing out the relation they bear to one another. For instance, if he were demonstrating the arm, he would point out that, "at the lower border of the tendon of the teres major, the median nerve is external to the brachial artery; but at the insertion of the coracobrachialis it crosses in front of the artery, and at the elbow the nerve lies internal to the artery." As he says this he points to the artery, so that you see it is all true.

The great difficulty in anatomy is to recollect these relations of the various structures to one another so precisely that you can write down from memory an account of any region in the body when the question is set at an examination.

From the sentence just quoted you see what is meant by the term "relations," and you will not fall into the mistake of a freshman who thought the radial and ulnar arteries were daughters of the brachial, because he heard it called their "parent trunk."

When you hear of the nerve being first "external" and then "internal" to the artery, you must not suppose the nerve gets into the tube of the artery; no, these terms have a special meaning in anatomy.

Every part of the body is referred to the "middle line," an imaginary plane which passes perpendicularly through it, and objects nearer than others to this line are said to be internal to them. The great toe is inter

nal to the second toe, and the second toe is external to the great toe.

But this rule is not without some striking exceptions; for instance, the internal carotid artery is external to the external carotid, and is called internal because it goes to the inside of the head, while the external carotid goes to the face.

This is only one example of the fact that the nomenclature of anatomy is a mass of confusion, and many modern anatomists are very anxious to have it completely rewritten, but that sweeping reform would require an international conference to be of any value.

The demonstrator is assisted by two or three "assistant-demonstrators," who are not official, only amateurs. They are generally students in their third or fourth year, who are going in for the examination for the Fellowship of the College of Surgeons, and keep up their anatomy by helping younger students out of their difficulties.

And very kind they are, too. Like many another tyro, we could make nothing out of the muscles of the back till an expert young assistant-demonstrator came and helped us. At some places we hear they are disliked, because they put down smoking too rigidly in the demonstrator's absence. Of course smoking cannot be allowed while dissecting, for it is fatal to work; but, as far as we have seen, a kind man can prevent it very easily. When he smells it, he has nothing to do but to say, with a smile, "Come now, old fellow, you know the demonstrator would jaw me if he came in and smelt tobacco; and you wouldn't like that, would you?" Of course you wouldn't, unless you are a regular brute, so you put out your pipe at once, and generally remark with naïveté, "All right, old fellow;