Introductory Lecture to a Course of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania: Delivered, November 7th, 1831 (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

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Excerpt from Introductory Lecture to a Course of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania<br/><br/>To appreciate the merit of this incipient enterprise of Dr. Shippen, and of its success, we must remember how scanty and scattered was the population of the British provinces of North America, how little intercourse the latter had with each other, and how few alliances with the province of Penn sylvania. We are also to remember the filial and hereditary veneration with which all looked to Great Britain, and the supposed impossibility of so elevated a science as medicine being taught here, in a rude and infant condition of society, with any degree of justness and efficiency. To these difii culties may be added the inveterate hostility with which all unimproved communities view the cultivation of anatomy by dissection. It is not our business at present to inquire whether this sentiment has a rational or a superstitious foundation, the fact equally remains in history, that man kind ih all ages have felt it a sacrilege to violate in this way the bodies of the dead, and in their penal enactments have frequently placed it on a footing with the most atrocious crimes. Such then was the situation of Dr. Shippen in 1762, with the prejudices of the people strongly against his voca tion, and laws equally discouraging, which, by their severe application, might at any time compromit his liberty and property. The persons of the present day can only form'a very inadequate conception of the difiiculties which sur rounded him, but happily the man was suited to a task, than which few things, in the language of his biographer, Dr. Wistar, require more knowledge of human nature, and greater powers of accommodation to the feelings of the heart.

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