What geology has done for our knowledge of the earth, has been done for our knowledge of the body by that method of study to which is given the name of General Anatomy.  It studies, not the organs as such, but the elements out of which the organs are constructed.  It is the geology of the body, as that is the general anatomy of the earth.  The extraordinary genius of Bichat, to whom more than any other we owe this new method of study, does not require Mr. Buckle’s testimony to impress the practitioner with the importance of its achievements.  I have heard a very wise physician question whether any important result had accrued to practical medicine from Harvey’s discovery of the circulation.  But Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology have received a new light from this novel method of contemplating the living structures, which has had a vast influence in enabling the practitioner at least to distinguish and predict the course of disease.  We know as well what differences to expect in the habits of a mucous and of a serous membrane, as what mineral substances to look for in the chalk or the coal measures.  You have only to read Cullen’s description of inflammation of the lungs or of the bowels, and compare it with such as you may find in Laennec or Watson, to see the immense gain which diagnosis and prognosis have derived from general anatomy.

The second new method of studying the human structure, beginning with the labors of Scarpa, Burns, and Colles, grew up principally during the first third of this century.  It does not deal with organs, as did the earlier anatomists, nor with tissues, after the manner of Bichat.  It maps the whole surface of the body into an arbitrary number of regions, and studies each region successively from the surface to the bone, or beneath it.  This hardly deserves the name of a science, although Velpeau has dignified it with that title, but it furnishes an admirable practical way for the surgeon who has to operate on a particular region of the body to study that region.  If we are buying a farm, we are not content with the State map or a geological chart including the estate in question.  We demand an exact survey of that particular property, so that we may know what we are dealing with.  This is just what regional, or, as it is sometimes called, surgical anatomy, does for the surgeon with reference to the part on which his skill is to be exercised.  It enables him to see with the mind’s eye through the opaque tissues down to the bone on which they lie, as if the skin were transparent as the cornea, and the organs it covers translucent as the gelatinous pulp of a medusa.

It is curious that the Japanese should have anticipated Europe in a kind of rude regional anatomy.  I have seen a manikin of Japanese make traced all over with lines, and points marking their intersection.  By this their doctors are guided in the performance of acupuncture, marking the safe places to thrust in needles, as we buoy out our ship-channels, and doubtless indicating to learned eyes the spots where incautious meddling had led to those little accidents of shipwreck to which patients are unfortunately liable.