University of Virginia Library

ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY AND SURGERY.

Professor Cabell.—The lectures on Anatomy will be illustrated by
the demonstration of artificial skeletons, wet and dry preparations lately
procured in Paris, and especially by careful dissections of fresh subjects,
with which the school is abundantly supplied.

After a thorough investigation of the structure and anatomical relations
of every part of a system or apparatus of organs associated in action,
the attention of the student will be directed to the physiology of their functions,
by an examination of their mode of accomplishment, their uses in the
economy, their dependence upon external and other influences, and the sympathies

of the organs which execute them. While teaching Surgical Anatomy,
the Professor instructs his class in the use of instruments by performing
the various Surgical operations on the dead body, and affords the students
who desire it, an opportunity of repeating these operations under his
superintendence.

The course of lectures on Surgery, will commence about the 1st March,
and will embrace a description of the Pathology, symptoms, and treatment
of all the diseases usually assigned to this branch of the healing art.

Books recommended: Horner's Special Anatomy—Velpeau's Surgical
Anatomy—Beclard's General Anatomy—S. Cooper's first lines of Surgery—S.
Cooper's Surgical Dictionary—and Dunglison's Human Physiology.

The organization of the medical department of the University of Virginia,
having been framed with a view to incorporate with the system of instruction
by public lectures the important advantages of private pupilage,
presents peculiarities to be found in no other school of medicine in the
Union. It would be neeedless to detail the circumstances by which the University
has been enabled to secure to Virginia and to the South generally,
all the benefits of a school so advantageously organized, but it is deemed
right after several years of successful operation, during which nearly 600
medical students have been educated, that the public should be made acquainted
with the peculiarities of a plan which ample experience has shewn
to be admirably calculated to fulfil the intentions of its founders.

1. Unlike other medical schools, the session is of the same length as the
academic session, ten months, and but two lectures are delivered on the
same day. This arrangement, while it enables three professors to perform
all the duties which in other schools, with shorter sessions, are assigned to
six, affords the student unusual facilities for gradually acquiring, and thereby
digesting the information conveyed to him by oral instruction, without
that confusion of thought and fatigue of mind which are inevitable when,
as always happens in city schools, he has to encounter daily six or seven
lectures delivered in rapid succession.

2. Immediately before each lecture the students are subjected to a full
and rigid examination on the subject of the preceding lecture, or on portions
of some approved text-book. This practice of daily examinations,
constituting one of the peculiar features in the organization of this school,
enables the professors to explain both the obscurities of the text, and such
parts of their lectures as may appear to be imperfectly understood by the
class, and thus supplies the student with a most valuable means of fixing
in his mind correct information, while it has an incidental advantage in familiarizing
him with the mode of trial to which he is to be subjected in his
final examination for graduation.

3. The length of the session renders practicable such a division of the
subjects of study, that the student has an opportunity of being well grounded
in the elementary branches of medical science before he is required to
listen to discourses on more complicated subjects. It is, then, apparent, that

this institution, offers to students of medicine, facilities, not found in other
schools, for commencing the study of their profession, while its connexion
with a general University and its other features as already adverted to, will
afford them the most favorable opportunities for laying the foundation of a
liberal scientific and professional education.

4. Any person of approved moral conduct may offer as a candidate for
graduation, and receive the degree of M. D. without reference to the time
he has been engaged in the study of medicine, or of joining the school, provided
he undergoes in a satisfactory manner the various examinations prescribed
by the enactments. There are usually five examinations on the several
divisions of the courses held at different periods, from the middle to
its end of the session, sufficient intervals being allowed to enable the diligent
student to make a thorough preparation on each branch.

5. Connected with the medical school, is an Anatomical and Pathological
Museum, which has been lately enriched with valuable and rare specimens
selected in Paris by one of the professors.

An annual appropriation is allowed by the authorities of the University
for the purpose of procuring subjects, so that ample means for the study of
Practical Anatomy are thus afforded to each student at the trifling cost of
$5. The students have ready access to the Public Library, containing in
its medical department most of the standard works of the profession, and
several sets of splendid Anatomical Plates.

An Infirmary has been established within the precincts, which, it is confidently
expected, will, before the next session, afford ample opportunities
for clinical instruction.

6. There are other advantages which need only be suggested, arising
from the location of the University, in a healthy situation, in the centre of
the State, removed from the temptations which in a city or large town often
thwart a student's most honest efforts of application.

7. The expenses for the entire session of ten months, commencing on the
first of September, are limited to $243, a sum not exceeding that which is
paid for a session of four months in city schools. It provides for board,
including bed and other room furniture, washing and attendance—fuel and
candles—rent of dormitory—use of library and other public rooms—fees
to the professors—and dissecting fee.

As the Philadelphia and other city schools require as a condition for
graduation that the candidate shall have attended two full courses of lectures,
and recognise one course in this institution as equivalent to one of their
own, students who wish to take their diplomas in Philadelphia, will yet
find an advantage in availing themselves, for the first session, of the peculiar
benefits of a school organized on the plan above described. Indeed
the students from this school have so constantly exhibited by their examinations
the excellence of this plan, that they have frequently elicited from the
professors in the University of Pennsylvania a formal commendation of
the institution in which it is adopted.