152 



BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



(c) Like the roads we traverse, such rules are but means to 

 ends, and have no intrinsic sanctity. 



(d) Like a circuitous but familiar road, a commonly accepted 

 rule is not to be abandoned without reflection. On the other 

 hand, no more is it to be laboriously traveled when new 

 conditions render a " short cut " desirable. 



(e) Extrinsic toponyms (that is, terms of location or direction 

 that do not refer expressly to the recognized body-regions, 

 dorsum, venter, etc.) should conform to the more usual verte- 

 brate attitude rather than to the erect attitude of man; e.o^., 

 posterior' and anterior, superior and inferior, and their deriv- 

 atives, compounds, and abbreviations should have significations 

 zootomic rather than anthropotomic. 



(/) There now prevail and are likely to persist two conditions 

 not merely unknown to the Patres anatoinici, but probably not 

 imagined by them : {a) the enormous increase of anatomic and 

 physiologic knowledge; {b) its general diffusion among the 

 people. 1 These two conditions ^ militate against the rigid 

 maintenance of grammatic rules that might prevent the estab- 

 lishment of new and shorter channels, or the fabrication of new 

 and briefer technical terms, the " tools of thought." Terms 

 like vena cava posterior are obtrusively Latin, and hence not 

 acceptable to the laity ; too much time and space are lost in 

 speaking and writing them, and time and space are daily 

 becoming more precious. 



Consciously or unconsciously, for many years English and 

 American anatomists have been gradually simplifying their 

 terminology in substantial accordance with the foregoing prop- 

 ositions. In Germany the signs of such improvements are as 

 yet comparatively few. 



Even if, however, the German committee were reconciled to 



1 In fulfillment of the declaration of the elder Agassiz, " Science must cease 

 to be the property of the few ; it must be woven into the common life of the 

 world." 



2 There is really a third condition, equally novel, but bearing less directly upon 

 the present question, viz., the pursuit of anatomy by women. Whatever view 

 may be taken of this in other respects, all decent men must rejoice that it has 

 hastened the elimination of the needless Nomina impiidica which formerly defiled 

 even the description of the brain. For further commentary upon this matter see 

 W. & G., ('82), 27. 



