We allow, that in teaching anatomy by lectures and demonstrations on the dead body, it is scarcely possible to avoid such an arrangement as we are here disapprov ing. There, it is of advantage to describe, first the skeleton, or the hones, and their appendages ; then the muscles, the nerves, the blood-vessels, lymphatics, then the several viscera, and, lastly, the integuments; and, accordingly, this is the order which we have followed in the general description of the human body, given in our introduction. Indeed, were the lecturer to aim at demonstrating the organs, according to the functions which they are destined to perform, he must have a much greater number of dead bodies, than even the most favoured professor in a populous city can generally command. But however well adapted such a division may be to anatomical lectures and demonstrations, it is by no means calculated for a general reader. He looks for something more than a mere description of the ex ternal forms, relative situations, and internal structure of organs. He desires to see how the several organs stand related to each other in their office; how they contribute to the can ying on of any particular function. For this purpose, lie must follow an arrangement in which the organs are disposed, not according to their relative si tuation, or similarity of structure, but according to the or ganic functions which they perform in the living body.
At a time, when the uses of the organs were as yet involved in obscurity, they might be distributed into re gions; but, in the present day, when we are acquainted with the object of most of their actions ; when descrip tive anatomy is little more than the first step towards the study of the animal functions, it is according to these functions, that we ought to arrange the organs by which they are performed. In this way, the student finds in his anatomical divisions an introduction to phy siology; he is accustomed, if we may be allowed the expression, to consider the organs in action, and not to contemplate merely inert insulated bodies, the study of which, in the usual method, is as tiresome to the mind as disgusting to the senses. See Bichat's Prelintinar!, Discourse to his ..inatomie Descriptive.
Besides accommodating our N kW of anatomy to mo dern physiology, we were desirous of arranging the Or gans of the human ;Jody, so as to admit of the general comparison %sun those of the inferior animals, which we are to give in the subsequent part. first object has been to describe all those organs which belong indiffer ently to either sex, or which are subservient to what Iii chat calls the functions of animal and of organic life. and then to consider those which distinguish the sexes, or are subservient to the function of reproduction. The functions common to both sexes arc those oh MoTioN,