Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/27

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ANATOMY xvii

ical Uses of Chloral " (which I deem my most important contribution to practical anatomy). I have edited also "Flower's Diagrams of the Nerves" and "Heath's Practical Anatomy," and have published anatom- ical and surgical papers on a new diagnosis of "Fracture of the Fibula," on the "Anatomy of Optic Chiasm" (with Dr. William Thompson), on the "Ossification of the Atlas Vertebra," on a case of "Asymmetry of the Skull," on a "Malformation of the Brain," on the "Physiology of the Inferior Laryngeal Nerves and the Intercostal Muscles, in a Case of Judi- cial Hanging," and numerous general medical articles, besides gather- ing material for several other papers and perhaps more extended publications."

At the height of the prosperity of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, the medical schools of Philadelphia charged for each course, and the student was allowed credit for a course in dissection taken elsewhere than in the school he was attending. Many students of the regular medical schools preferred to do this work at the Philadelphia School. The numbers decreased after the removal of the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania to West Philadelphia and the strengthening of the course in anatomy at the Jefferson Medical College. The teaching of anatomy at the Philadelphia School was of an essentially practical nature, w 7 ith the relation of anatomy to surgery kept ever to the fore. The year after Keen delivered his farewell address a new school with the same name was started by a former instructor at the Philadelphia School, and, under one form or another, was continued until recent years.

Among others more or less associated with the Philadelphia School of Anatomy during the last twenty-five years of its existence, were J. F. Meigs, the well known obstetrician, S. Weir Mitchell, who began his work on snake venom in the building occupied by the school, and "with G. R. Morehouse discovered the extraordinary chiasm in the inferior laryngeal nerves in chelonia," and Dr. Brinton, who discovered a method of pre- serving fresh anatomical specimens by applying gutta percha dissolved in benzole, and published an excellent paper on "Dislocations of the Sternum." Harrison Allen also carried on some of his studies in com- parative anatomy in the building occupied by this school. In spite of the great emphasis laid on the "practical side" of anatomy in the school scientific research held a real position there. Even medical students were encouraged to investigate. Thus the valuable statistical study of the brachial plexus made by Walsh ("American Journal of Medical Sciences," 1877, vol. Ixxiv, p. 387), was begun there at Keen's suggestion.

At the Pennsylvania Medical College (the medical department of the Pennsylvania College at Gettysburg), which was founded in Philadelphia, in 1839, and discontinued in 1861, S. G. Morton was professor of anatomy from 1839-43. Morton gathered a splendid collection of skulls and pub-