Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Army Medical Department, Netley / by Sir William Aitken.

  • Aitken, William, 1825-1892.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Descriptive catalogue of the pathological specimens contained in the museum of the Army Medical Department, Netley / by Sir William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    The additions to the Museum since 1860, when the Army Medica School wa3 opened at Fort Pitt by the late Mr. Sidney Herbert, are painted in red numbers on each. The general plan of the Catalogue is similar to that of the Catalogue of the Koyal College of Surgeons Museum, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London; and the arrangement of the specimens is that originally proposed by Mr. Paget (now Sir James Paget, Bart.), and adopted by the College in 1844. On this plan the Preparations have been arranged in several series, and in numerical order according to the anatomical organ or tissue which is the seat of the morbid change. This is the arrangement and plan now adopted in the Museums of Pathology recently catalogued; and it is really the only practical arrangement for working a Museum of Pathology. It is a plan which does not clash with conflicting theories in Phj'siology or Pathology; and it has also the great advantage of admitthig any number of specimens to be hereafter added to the collection in yearly or periodical additions in their proper places in the respective series, without disturbing the arrangement of the Preparations already in it. The description of the individual Preparations in each series is preceded by a classified index of the kind of lesion shown in the specimens contained in the series. The dried Preparations, where practicable, have been mounted in separate box enclosures, with glass sides, and described in their appropriate place in the series to which they belong. As far as it has been found possible, the date when the Preparation came into the Museum appears in the history given of the case, which is printed in smaller type, thereby furnishing data which may be of interest in connection with the history of disease. Every Preparation in the Museum has been repeatedly and systematically examined and compared with its record in the working M.S. Catalogue of the Museum, first in 1860 by the Editor and Dr. Philip Frank (then of the Army Medical Department, and now a physician practising at Cannes in the Reviera), subsequently in 1864 by the Editor and Dr. Peter Davidson, of the Army Medical Department (since retired), then assistant to the Professor of Pathology; and several times since in sections, in connection with the systematic teaching of Pathology in the Army Medical School, by the Editor, especially assisted by Surgeons Welch, Boilleau, T. R. Lewis, H. S. McGill, and David Bruce, the assistants to the Professor of Pathology. On each of these occasions a considerable number of