Ohio History Journal

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DEVELOPMENT OF THE TEACHING OF ANATOMY IN OHIO,

DEVELOPMENT OF THE TEACHING OF ANATOMY IN OHIO,

1890-1945

by LINDEN F. EDWARDS

Professor of Anatomy, Ohio State University

 

In America during the nineteenth century there was an un-

precedented expansion of population over an enormous territory.

This situation created a huge demand for doctors with the result

that proprietary medical colleges under private ownership were

founded in great numbers. According to Flexner American towns

produced over four hundred such medical schools and the city

of Cincinnati alone witnessed at least twenty.1

In regard to the status of anatomical instruction in these schools

it should be pointed out that, in spite of the fact that many pro-

fessors of anatomy were excellent teachers and skilled with the

scalpel and probe, nevertheless, they were for the most part physi-

cians or surgeons foremost and teachers secondarily. Moreover,

since adequate dissection material was oftentimes difficult to obtain,

memorization of anatomic details from textbooks superseded actual

laboratory experience. According to Rauch some of the students

as late as 1889-90 graduated without having ever dissected.2 Dr.

Simon Flexner once stated that when he studied medicine he was

one of 500 students who watched a prosector dissect.3 Naturally

this state of affairs in American anatomical teaching throughout

most of the nineteenth century failed to bring forth any contri-

butions to the science of anatomy and merely served to render the

subject sterile.

Up to this period the subject of anatomy was limited to gross

anatomy in accordance with the Greek concept (the word "anatomy"

is derived from a Greek word meaning "to cut up"). With the

 

1 Abraham Flexner, Medical Education in the United States and Canada (New

York, 1910), 6.

2 John H. Rauch, Medical Education, Medical Colleges and the Regulation of the

Practice of Medicine in the United States and Canada 1765-1891 (Springfield, Ill.,

1891), xxvii.

3 Florence Sabin, Franklin Paine Mall, The Story of a Mind (Baltimore, 1934),

124.

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