Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), “[Notice of Chruvelhier's Anatomy]” (A), from The Evening Mirror (New York), October 26, 1844, vol. 1, no. 18, p. 2, col. 5, top

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CHRUVELHIER’S ANATOMY, illustrated by wood cuts, &c., &c. Edited by Proffessor [[Professor]] Granville Sharpe Pattison, of the Medical Department of the University of New York. Harper & Brothers.

It is hardly worth while for us to praise Chruvelhier's work on the anatomy of the human body, since it has been made the text book of many of the schools of Europe and this country. We are not to expect at the present advanced state of anatomical science much that is new, and in consequence the chief merit to which writers in this country lay claim is facility in arrangement, clearness and precision in language, and correctness in illustration. The great dasideratum [[desideratum]] in such works is to get a book which shall contain such wood cut plates or engravings as shall be sufficient substitutes for the dead body. This is an extremely difficult task even when a book is got up with most expensive and valuable plates, and even these are useful chiefly to refresh the memory after dissections. It is a matter of deep regret that the profession is so poorly paid — that avenues to it are so easy — and that so many of those who enter it are so poor that they are unable to provide themselves with those large and splendid engravings which gave Chruvelhier in his organizal [[original]] work on Pathology such distinguished reputation. The book before us is suited to the times since it gives the author's invaluable text, numerous wood cuts, which doubtless are some help to early students, and, above all, gives the largest amount of matter for the smallest possible price.

It is enough for the public, regarding the merits of the book itself, that it is endorsed by the recommendation of its distinguished Editor, whose long experience and marked success as a teacher gives to his opinion touching any matter pertaining to his branch great authority.

The publication of this work seems to be a part of the policy of the faculty to which he belongs — who, one after another, are giving us reprints of standard foreign works on the branches they are appointed to teach — a policy worthy of all commendation were it not that the profession expects of some of them that they will embody the results of their own experience, and give us American text books of practical surgery and the like. It is in our opinion due to the dignity of himself and the profession of which he is the acknowledged head, that Dr. Mott should give to the records of medicine something more than the isolated achievements of his knife. The character of our surgery needs the vindication of such authority, for it ts [[is]] a remarkable fact, that while our country has in the last twenty years been the birth place of most of the great operations of the era it has never yet given to the world a single work on surgery worthy of the name