124 



BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



V. 1895-96. Among the requirements of technical terms 

 enumerated in 1871 was "Independence of context for signifi- 

 cation." The rigid application of this would exclude all homo- 

 nyms and would require every term to be absolutely explicit. It 

 was perhaps not unnatural for a comparative beginner in the 

 subject to make such a rule, and, having made it, to adhere to 

 it somewhat persistently, as in the following cases. 



Of the three current appellations, conarium, epiphysis, and 

 corpus pineale, the last was rejected unhesitatingly as a poly- 

 onym, and the second as applying equally (without the qualifier 

 cerebri) to the separable end of a growing bone; as recently 

 acknowledged ('96), I long resisted the precept and example of 

 H. F. Osborn and E. C. Spitzka in favor of epiphysis as correla- 

 tive with hypophysis, and failed to recognize the full force of 

 Ball's remark, " The human mind wearies of too many names, 

 and much more readily assimilates a new meaning for an old 

 one." 



Likewise, although favoring the general plan of rendering 

 the Latin ae and oe by e in anglicized (paronymized) words,^ I 

 retained the diphthong in coelia and its compounds (from 

 KOiXla, a cavity) for the sake of distinguishing them from the 

 derivatives of KriXr], a tumor. I now frankly acknowledge the 

 non-necessity of the diphthong even for the discrimination of 

 encephalocele, the normal cavity of the brain, from the same 

 word signifying an abnormal protrusion of the organ. 



In August, 1884, I proposed to replace the common poly- 

 onym, axis cereb7'o-spi7ialis, and even Owen's 7nyele7icephalon, 

 by the brief mononym, iieiiron, warranted by neiiralis, neiiren- 

 tericus, etc., and correlated with enteroti {canalis alifnentaria) and 

 axon {axis soviatica). The term was used by Minot ('92), Stowell 

 ('85), Waters ('91), and others. Its abandonment by me in favor 

 of neiiraxis ('89) was due to two later observations : (a) the prior 

 use of neiiraxis "- in the same sense ; {b) the prior application of 



1 In this country no medical writer has more persistently and vigorously urged 

 this simplification than the former editor of the Medical News, Gould, George M. 

 ('94, '96). 



2 In the Dictionnaire de Medecin of Robin and Littre occurs nivraxe, the 

 Galloparonym of a potential antecedent, neuraxis ; but neither the propounder 

 nor the first adopter is named. 



