As a professor and teacher of surgical science Dr. Mott won a brilliant reputation, and was considered one of the most thoroughly successful instructors in the Union.  He had the power of winning the attention of his pupils at the opening of his lectures and of retaining it until the close.  He made even the most difficult operations so clear and simple in his lectures that the dullest intellects could comprehend them; and his system of practical demonstration of his subjects was vastly superior to any thing that had ever been seen in America.  He was the first to introduce into this country the system of delivering clinical lectures, or lectures at the bedside of the patient, whose ailments were operated upon during the course of his remarks.  This system is naturally the most repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the student are so great that they outweigh all other considerations.  Other professors had shrunk from subjecting their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen enough, during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of the profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately upon establishing himself in this country he introduced it.  He met with opposition at first, but he gradually overcame it, and made the advantages of his system so apparent to all that at length the opposition entirely ceased.

The greatest difficulty to which American medical schools have always been subject has been the almost utter impossibility of procuring dead bodies for dissection.  It was this want that compelled Dr. Mott, as it has compelled so many others, to seek a practical education in Europe; and when he came back to the college as professor, he was met by the same drawback to thorough instruction.  The law forbade the taking of dead bodies for dissection, under severe penalties.  If a student was ever found in possession of a limb, he was liable to fine and imprisonment; and popular sentiment was so strong against the practice of dissection that those who engaged in it ran serious risk of incurring violence at the hands of the mob.  Dr. Mott was often driven to desperate expedients in the procuring of subjects.  He was fond of relating one of his adventures of this kind, which will show the reader how he was enabled to carry on his lectures.

It was in the winter of 1815, and it had been found impossible to procure a supply of subjects for the season.  They could not be obtained at any price, and it was evident that if any were to be had, the doctor and his pupils would have to take the matter in their own hands.  There was a grave-yard just outside the city, in which a number of interments had recently been made, and the doctor resolved upon securing these bodies for his dissecting-room.  It was a dangerous undertaking, as discovery would subject all engaged in it to the direst penalties of the law, if, indeed, they should be lucky enough to