SOME NEURAL TERMS. 1 59 



The verdict of Professor Kolliker that the nomenclature 

 coming from America in recent years is a "complete failure " 

 because he cannot read the articles based thereon approximates 

 what has been called " the erection of the limitations of one's 

 individual experience into objective laws of the universe." I 

 sincerely trust that he may some day concede the validity of 

 these two propositions: (i) A considerable number of investi- 

 gators and advanced instructors on both sides of the ocean have 

 employed the "American" system more or less systematically. 

 (2) Judging from my own experience as learner and teacher, 

 the hundreds of students, general and special, upon whom that 

 system has been practised since 1880 have either saved so 

 much time or gained so much more information within a given 

 time as to make its employment " worth while," even when 

 the later environment proved unfavorable to its permanent 

 use. 



In concluding this response to the criticism of "the oldest 

 German anatomist," I venture to call his attention to the dif- 

 ferent reception accorded my plans for terminologic simplifica- 

 tion by two other anatomic teachers well adv^anced in years, viz., 

 Joseph Leidy (p. 121, note) and Oliver Wendell Holmes (p. 127). 

 In order, also, that I may not appear unmindful of the fact that 

 the assimilation of verbal novelties becomes less easy with 

 increasing age,^ I reproduce the concluding paragraph of my 

 second paper upon the subject ('8lb) : 



The beginner can learn the new terms even more easily than the 

 old, and at any rate he has nothing to forget. But the trained anato- 

 mist shrinks from an unfamiliar word as from an unworn boot; the 

 trials of his own pupilage are but vaguely remembered; each day there 

 seems more to be done, and less time in which to do it; nor is it to 

 be expected that he will be attracted spontaneously toward the con- 



1 The tu quoque argument is ungracious at tiie best, and tiie occasions for its 

 employment in this paper have been too numerous already. But when I recall 

 the delay and mystification inflicted upon me and my students by the variety and 

 heterogeneity of terms, Latin and vernacular, with which most German treatises 

 upon encephalic anatomy literally bristle, I cannot but feel that, however sincere 

 may be the repentance therefor among the anatomists of that nation, the needed 

 reform should have been practised for a somewhat longer period before others 

 were rebuked. 



