Time and a retentive memory are generally assumed to be the sole requisites for acquiring a mastery of anatomy. By inference, the facts of anatomy are completely recorded in the particular edition of the particular author that one studied in medical school. Specimens and dissections are merely aids in cultivating the memory and in learning variations. In pure morphology, this may be true for some readily studied structures—the external configuration and the internal architecture of bones, for example. But even here the interpretation of the internal architecture is a moot question.
With regard to the venous system one finds that the statements in the anatomy textbooks are vague. Except for certain vessels, such as those seen at every autopsy, those involved in disease complexes, the jugular veins, for example, and those used for the practice of venipuncture, the anatomy generally states that the veins are like the arteries which they