Human and Comparative Anatomy at Oxford

Abstract

IN the article which appeared in your last number under the above heading, expressions occur which may, I think, lead to misconception as to the position of the department of Human Anatomy. It is of such importance in the interest of scientific medical education that the academical teaching of human anatomy should not consist merely in “technical training in anthropotomy,” that I cannot allow the statement that the teaching of the subject in Oxford is of this nature to pass without comment. Had the writer of the article in question taken the trouble to inquire of the University lecturer here, or of any of the University professors of human anatomy elsewhere, for instance at Cambridge, Edinburgh or Dublin, or had he consulted any of the leading text-books of the subject, he would have found that its scope is much more extended than he supposes. The misstatement having been made, however unintentionally, must be corrected.