SOME NEURAL TERMS. 1 39 



an average of once in five lines; corpus occupies 2.5 lines, one- 

 fortieth of the entire paper. 



The elimination of corpus from all neural names constituted 

 one of the fundamental propositions of my first communication 

 upon the general subject ('80), and since that time it has been 

 consistently practised and persistently preached. 



By the use of the genitive case, corporis callosi, the German 

 committee have designated the various divisions of the callosum 

 (splenium, genu, truncus, and rostrum); also the sulcus along 

 its dorsal margin. They have thus avoided the use of the 

 secondary adjective callosalis. But in expressly rejecting 

 pcdunculus corporis callosi in favor of gyrus subcallosus (His, 

 '95, 170-172), they practically concede the superfluity of the 

 corpus. 



Unless we are prepared to abandon all adjective substantives, 

 there seems to be no reason for the further retention of corpus 

 in any of the terms enumerated. Corpus fornicis of the 

 German list is not open to the objection that naturally arises 

 against corpus corporis callosi, but truncus corpus callosi is a 

 good precedent for truncus fornicis, if the distinction be 

 necessary. 



Dura vs. dura mater. — This constitutes a type and test 

 case for a considerable group of anatomic terms from which, 

 for fifteen years, I have dropped the nouns (here italicized), viz., 

 pia mater, substantia alba, substantia cinerea, membrana (or 

 tunica) serosa, mb. (or tn) mucosa, vib. (or tn.) submucosa, mb. 

 (or tn) arachnoidea, medulla oblongata. They differ from the 

 group of " corpus " polyonyms, in that the elimination of the 

 substantive leaves a feminine instead of a neuter adjective to 

 be used substantively and as a base for the formation of 

 secondary adjectives, dural, mucosal, cinereal, arachnoidal, etc. 



Curiously enough, the first precedent for this known to me 

 dates back a hundred and fifty years. In the Medical Diction- 

 ary of James (1743), in the article " Cerebrum " occurs the 

 following sentence: " The superficial vessels of the cerebrum 

 are lodged between the two laminae of the pia." 



The employment of the mononymic feminine adjectives as 

 substantives and of the secondary adjectives derived therefrom 



