aculty and
Professor of Surgery and Relative Anatomy in the new University Medical
School. The science of Relative Anatomy is of the highest importance to
the surgeon, and of this science Dr. Mott is generally regarded as the
author. He held his position in the University for twenty years, and in
1860, after a period of fifty years spent in the active duties of his
professorship, retired from the immediate discharge of them, and was
made Professor Emeritus, in which capacity he occasionally lectured to
the classes during each of the remaining years of his life.

As a professor and teacher of surgical science Dr. Mott won a brilliant
reputation, and was considered one of the most thoroughly successful
instructors in the Union. He had the power of winning the attention of
his pupils at the opening of his lectures and of retaining it until the
close. He made even the most difficult operations so clear and simple in
his lectures that the dullest intellects could comprehend them; and his
system of practical demonstration of his subjects was vastly superior
to any thing that had ever been seen in America. He was the first to
introduce into this country the system of delivering clinical lectures,
or lectures at the bedside of the patient, whose ailments were operated
upon during the course of his remarks. This system is naturally the most
repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the student are so great
that they outweigh all other considerations. Other professors had shrunk
from subjecting their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen
enough, during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him
that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of the
profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately upon
establishing himself in this country he introduced it. He met with
opposition at first, but he gradually overcame it, and made the
advantages of his system so apparent to all that at length the
opposition entirely ceased.

The greatest difficulty to which American medical schools have always
been subject has been the almost utter impossibility of procuring dead
bodies for dissection. It was this want that compelled Dr. Mott, as it
has compelled so many others, to seek a practical education in Europe;
and when he came back to the college as professor, he was met by the
same drawback to thorough instruction. The law forbade the taking of
dead bodies for dissection, under severe penalt